





^ 



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PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS 




BOOKS BY EZRA POUND 



PROVENCA, being poems selected 
from Personae, Exultations, and 
Canzoniere 

THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE: 

An attempt to define someivhat 
the charm of the pre-renaissance 
literature of Latin-Europe 

THE SONNETS AND BALLATE 
OF GUIDO CAVALCANTI 

RIPOSTES 

DES IMAGISTES: an anthology 
of the Imagists, Ezra Pound, 
Richard Aldington, H. D., F. S. 
Flint, William Carlos Williams, 
and others 

GAUDIER-BRZESKA : A memoir 

NOH: A Study of the Classical 
Stage of Japan {ivith Ernest 
Fenollosa. Alfred A. Knopf, 
Neiv York) 

LUSTRA with Earlier Poems, {Al- 
fred A. Knopf, Neiv York) 

PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS. 

{Prose. Alfred A. Knopf, Neiv 
York) 




EZRA POUND 

[CAMERA PORTRAIT BY E. O. HOPPE, LONDON] 



/ 



PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS 



EZRA POUND 



/ 




NEW YORK • ALFRED A. KNOPF • MCMXVIII 



V O' 



COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY 
EZRA POUND 

Published June 191 i 






JUL -I leis"^ 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©GI.A499523 



TO 

JOHN QUINN 



Certain of these sketches and essays have appeared in 
' ' Poetry, ' " ' The Fortnightly Review, " ' ' The New Age, ' ' 
'' ' The Quarterly Review, ' ' " The Future, '' " The Egoist, ' ' 
and ''The Little Review," to the editors of which pe- 
riodicals the author wishes to make due acknowledg- 
ment. 



CONTENTS 

Jodindranath Mawhwor's Occupation 3 

An Anachronism at Chinon 11 

Religio 23 

Anx Etuves de Wiesbaden 26 

L 'Homme Moyen Sensuel 33 

Pierrots 43 

Stark Realism 45 

Twelve Dialogues of Fontenelle: 

I Alexander and Phrine 49 
II Dido and Stratonice ' 52 

III Anacreon and Aristotle 55 

IV Homer and ^sop 59 
V Socrates and Montaigne 62 

VI Charles V and Erasmus 66 

VII Agnes Sorel — Roxelane 70 

VIII Brutus and Faustina 74 

IX Helen and Fulvia 77 

X Seneca and Scarron 80 

XI Strato, Raphael of Urbino 84 

XII Bombastes Paracelsus and Moliere 88 

A Retrospect: 95 

A Few Don 'ts 96 

Prolegomena 102 



CONTENTS 




Remy de Gourmont 




I 


112 


II 


123 


Ford Madox Hueffer and the Prose Tradition 




in Verse 


129 


The Rev. G. Crabbe, LL.B. 


138 


Arnold Dolmetseh 


143 


Dolmetsch and Vers Libre 


151 


"Dubliners" and Mr. James Joyce 


156 


Meditations 


161 


Troubadours: Their Sorts and Conditions 


166 


Notes on Elizabethan Classicists 




I 


186 


II 


193 


III 


202 


IV 


207 


V 


210 


Appendices 




I The Serious Artist 


219 


II Extract From a Letter to ''The 




Dial" 


243 


III Ezra Pound Files Exceptions 


245 


IV Vortographs 


251 


V Arnold Dolmetsch 


256 



PAY ANNE S 



PAVANNES 

1. 

JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR'S OCCUPATION 

The soul of Jodindranath Mawhwor clove to the god 
of this universe and he meditated the law of the Shas- 
tras. 

He was a man of moderate income inherited for the 
most part from his fathers, of whom there were several, 
slightly augmented by his own rather desultory opera- 
tions of commerce. He had never made money by con- 
quest and was inclined to regard this method of acquisi- 
tion as antiquated; as belonging rather to the days of 
his favorite author than to our own. 

He had followed the advice of the Sutras, had be- 
come the head of an house in the not unprosperous city 
of Migdalb, in a quarter where dwelt a reasonable pro- 
portion of fairly honest and honourable people not un- 
averse to gossip and visits. His house was situated by 
a watercourse, in lieu of new fangled plumbing, and in 
this his custom was at one with that of the earliest Celts. 
It was divided in various chambers for various occupa- 
tions, surrounded by a commodious garden, and pos- 
sessed of the two chief chambers, the ** exterior'' and 
the ''interior" {hutt and hen). The interior was the 
place for his women, the exterior enhanced with rich 
perfumes, contained a bed, soft, luscious, and agreeable 
to the action of vision, covered with a cloth of unrivalled 
whiteness. It was a little humped in the middle, and 

3 



4 PAVANNES 

surmounted with garlands and bundles of flowers, which 
were sometimes renewed in the morning-. Upon it were 
also a coverlet brightly embroidered and two cylindrical 
pillows, one at the head and the other placed at the foot. 
There was also a sort of sofa or bed for repose, at the 
head of which stood a case for unguents, and perfumes 
to be used during the night, and a stand for flowers and 
pots of cosmetic and other odoriferous substances, es- 
sences for perfuming the breath, new cut slices of lemon 
peel and such things as were fitting. On the floor near 
the sofa rested a metal spittoon, and a toilet case, and 
above it was a luth suspended from an elephant's tusk, 
uncut but banded with silver. There was also a draw- 
ing table, a bowl of perfume, a few books, and a garland 
of amaranths. Further off was a sort of round chair 
or tabouret, a chest containing a chess board, and a low 
table for dicing. In the outer apartment were cages for 
Jodindranath's birds. He had a great many too many. 
There were separate small rooms for spinning, and one 
for carving in wood and such like dilettantismes. In 
the garden was a sort of merry-go-round of good rope, 
looking more or less like a May-pole. There was like- 
wise a common see-saw or teeter, a green house, a sort 
of rock garden, and two not too comfortable benches. 

2. 

Jodindranath rose in the morning and brushed his 
teeth, after having performed other unavoidable duties 
as prescribed in the sutra, and he applied to his bodj' 
a not excessive, as he considered it, amount of unguents 
and perfumes. He then blackened his eyebrows, drew 
faint lines under his eyes, put a fair deal of rouge on 
his lips, and regarded himself in a mirror. Then having 
chewed a few betel leaves to perfume his breath, and 



JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR 5 

munched another bonne-bouche of perfume, he set about 
his day's business. He was a creature of habit. That 
is to say, he bathed, daily. And upon alternate days 
he anointed his person with oil, and on the third day 
he lamented that the mossy substance employed by the 
earliest orthodox hindoos was no longer obtainable. He 
had never been brought to regard soap with com- 
plaisance. His conscience was troubled, both as to the 
religious and social bearing of this solidified grease. He 
suspected the presence of beef-suet; it was at best a 
parvenu and Mohametan substance. Every four days 
he shaved, that is to say, he shaved his head and his 
visage, every five or ten days he shaved all the rest of 
his body. He meticulously removed the sweat from his 
arm-pits. He ate three meals daily; in the morning, 
afternoon and at evening as is prescribed in the Chara- 
yana. 

Immediately after breakfast he spent some time in- 
structing his parrots in language. He then proceeded 
to cock-fights, quail-fights and ram-fights ; from them to 
the classical plays, though their representations have 
sadly diminished. He slept some hours at mid-day. 
Then, as is befitting to the head of an house, he had him- 
self arrayed in his ornaments and habiliment and passed 
the afternoon in talk with his friends and acquaintance. 
The evening was given over to singing. Toward the 
end of it Jodindranath, as the head of his house, re- 
taining only one friend in his companj^, sat waiting in 
the aforementioned perfumed and well arranged cham- 
ber. As the lady with whom he was at that time con- 
nected did not arrive on the instant, he considered send- 
ing a messenger to reproach her. The atmosphere grew 
uneasy. His friend ]\Iohon fidgeted slightly. 

Then the lady arrived. Mohon, his friend, rose gra- 



6 PAVANNES 

ciously, bidding her welcome, spoke a few pleasant words 
and retired. Jodindranath remained. And for that 
day, the twenty fifth of August, 1916, this was his last 
occupation. In this respect the day resembled all others. 
This sort of thing has gone on for thirty five hundred 
years and there have been no disastrous consequences. 

3. 

As to Jodindranath 's thoughts and acts after Mohon 
had left him, I can speak with no definite certainty. I 
know that my friend was deeply religious ; that he mod- 
eled his life on the Shastras and somewhat on the Sutra. 
To the Kama Sutra he had given minute attention. He 
was firmly convinced that one should not take one's 
pleasure with a woman who was a lunatic, or leprous, 
or too white, or too black, or who gave forth an un- 
pleasant odor, or who lived an ascetic life, or whose hus- 
band was a man given to wrath and possessed of inordi- 
nate power. These points were to him a matter of grave 
religion. 

He considered that his friends should be constant and 
that they should assist his designs. 

He considered it fitting that a citizen should enter into 
relations with laundrymen, barbers, cowmen, florists, 
druggists, merchants of betel leaves, cab-drivers, and 
with the wives of all these. 

He had carefully considered the sizes and shapes and 
ancient categories of women; to wit, those which should 
be classified as she-dog, she-horse, and she-elephant, ac- 
cording to their cubic volume. He agreed with the 
classic author who recommends men to choose women 
about their own size. 

The doctrine that love results either from continuous 
habit, from imagination, from faith, or from the percep- 



JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR 7 

tion of exterior objects, or from a mixture of some or all 
of these causes, gave him no difficulty. He accepted the 
old authors freely. 

We have left him with Lalunmokish seated upon the 
bed humped in the middle. I can but add that he had 
carefully considered the definitions laid down in the 
Sutra; kiss nominal, kiss palpitant, kiss contactic, the 
kiss of one lip and of two lips (preferring the latter), 
the kiss transferred; the kiss showing intention. Be- 
yond this he had studied the various methods of scratch- 
ing and tickling, and the nail pressures as follows: 
sonorous, half moon and circle, peacock-claw, and blue- 
lotus. 

He considered that the Sutra was too vague when it 
described the Bengali women, saying that they have large 
nails, and that the southern women have small nails, 
which may serve in divers manners for giving pleasure 
but give less grace to the hand. Biting he did not much 
approve. Nor was he very greatly impressed with the 
literary tastes of the public women in Paraliputra. He 
read books, but not a great many. He preferred con- 
versation which did not leave the main groove. He did 
not mind its being familiar. 

(For myself I can only profess the deepest respect for 
the women of Paraliputra, who have ever been the 
friends of brahmins and of students and who have greatly 
supported the arts.) 



Upon the day following, as Jodindranath was retir- 
ing for his mid-day repose, his son entered the per- 
fumed apartment. Jodindra closed the book he had 
been reading. The boy was about twelve years of age. 
Jodindra began to instruct him, but without indicating 



8 PAVANNES 

what remarks were his own and what derived from an- 
cient authority. He said : — 

' ' Flower of my life, lotus bud of the parent stem, you 
must preserve our line and keep fat our ancestral spirits 
lest they be found withered like bats, as is said in the 
Mahabharata. And for this purpose you will doubtless 
marry a virgin of your own caste and acquire a legal 
posterity and a good reputation. Still, usage of women 
is not for one purpose only. For what purpose is the 
usage of women?" 

''The use of women," answered the boy, ''is for gen- 
eration and pleasure." 

"There is also a third use," said his father, "yet with 
certain women you must not mingle. Who are the pro- 
hibited women?" 

The boy answ^ered, "We should not practise dalliance 
with the women of higher caste, or with those whom 
another has had for his pleasure, even though they are 
of our own caste. But the practise of dalliance with 
women of lower caste, and with women expelled from 
their own caste, and with public women, and with women 
who have been twice married is neither commanded us 
nor forbidden." 

"With such women," said Jodindranath, "dalliance 
has no object save pleasure. But there are seasons in 
life when one should think broadly. There are circum- 
stances when you should not merely parrot a text or 
think only as you have been told by your tutor. As in 
dalliance itself there is no text to be followed verbatim, 
for a man should trust in part to the whim of the moment 
and not govern himself wholly by rules, so in making 
your career and position, you should think of more 
things than generation and pleasure. 

"You need not say merely: 'The woman is willing' 



JODINDRANATH MAWHWOR 9 

or 'She has been two times married, what harm can 
there be in this business?' These are mere thoughts of 
the senses, impractical fancies. But you have your life 
before you, and perchance a time will come when you 
may say, 'This woman has gained the heart of a very 
great husband, and rules him, and he is a friend of my 
enemy, if I can gain favor with her, she will persuade 
him to give up my enemy.' My son, you must manage 
your rudder. And again, if her husband have some evil 
design against you, she may divert him, or again you 
may say, 'If I gain her favor I may then make an end 
of her husband and we shall have all his great riches.' 
Or if you should fall into misfortune and say, 'A liaison 
with this woman is in no way beset with danger, she will 
bring me a very large treasure, of which I am greatly 
in need considering my pestilent poverty and my inabil- 
ity to make a good living.' 

"Or again: 'This woman knows my weak points, 
and if I refuse her she will blab them abroad and tarnish 
my reputation. And she will set her husband against 
me.' 

"Or again: 'This woman's husband has violated my 
women, I will give him his own with good interest. ' 

"Or again: 'With this woman's aid I may kill the 
enemy of the Rajah, whom I have been ordered to kill, 
and she hides him.' 

"Or again: 'The woman I love is under this fe- 
male 's influence, I will use one as the road to the other. ' 

"Or: 'This woman will get me a rich wife whom I 
cannot get at without her.' No, my Blue Lotus, life is 
a serious matter. You will not always have me to guide 
you. You must think of practical matters. Under such 
circumstances you should ally yourself with such 



10 PAVANNES 

Thus spoke Jodindra; but the counsel is very ancient 
and is mostly to be found in the Sutras. These books 
have been thought very holy. They contain chapters 
on pillules and philtres. 

When Jodindranath had finished this speech he sank 
back upon one of the cylindrical cushions. In a few 
moments his head bowed in slumber. This was the day 
for oil. The next day he shaved his whole body. His 
life is not unduly ruffled. 

Upon another day Jodindranath said to his son, 
''There are certain low women, people of ill repute, ad- 
dicted to avarice. You should not converse with them 
at the street corners, lest your creditors see you. ' ' 

His son's life was not unduly ruffled. 



AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 

Behind them rose the hill with its grey octagonal 
castle, to the west a street with good houses, gardens 
occasionally enclosed and well to do, before them the 
slightly crooked lane, old worm-eaten fronts low and 
uneven, booths with their glass front-frames open, slid 
aside or hung bach, the flaccid bottle-green of the panes 
reflecting odd lights from the provender and cheap 
crockery; a few peasant women with baskets of eggs and 
of fowls, while just before them an old peasant with one 
hen in his basket alternately stroked its head and then 
smacked it to make it go down under the strings. 

The couple leaned upon one of the tin tables in the 
moderately clear space by the inn, the elder, grey, with 
thick hair, square of forehead, square bearded, yet with 
a face showing curiously long and oval in spite of this 
quadrature; in the eyes a sort of friendly, companion- 
able melancholy, now intent, now with a certain blank- 
ness, like that of a child cruelly interrupted, or of an 
old man surprised and self-conscious in some act too 
young for his years, the head from the neck to the crown 
in contrast almost brutally with the girth and great 
belly: the head of Don Quixote, and the corpus of 
Sancho Panza, animality mounting into the lines of the 
throat and lending energy to the intellect. 

His companion obviously an American student. 

Student: I came here in hopes of this meeting yet, 
since you are here at all, you must have changed many 
opinions. 

11 



12 PAVANNES 

The Elder: Some. Which do you mean? 

Student: Since you are here, personal and persist- 
ing? 

Rabelais: All that I believed or believe you will find 
in De Senectute: '^ . . that being so active, so swift 
in thought ; that treasures up in memory such multitudes 
and varieties of things past, and comes likewise upon 
new things . . . can be of no mortal nature. ' ' 

Student: And yet I do not quite understand. Your 
outline is not always distinct. Your voice however is 
deep, clear and not squeaky. 

Bahelais: I was more interested in words than in my 
exterior aspect, I am therefore vocal rather than spatial. 

Student: I came here in hopes of this meeting, yet 
I confess I can scarcely read you. I admire and close 
the book, as not infrequently happens with ''classics." 

Rabelais: I am the last person to censure you, and 
your admiration is perhaps due to a fault in your taste. 
I should have paid more heed to DeBellay, young 
Joachim. 

Student: You do not find him a prig? 

Rabelais: I find no man a prig who takes serious 
thought for the language. 

Student : And your own ? Even Voltaire called it an 
amassment of ordure. 

Rabelais: And later changed his opinion. 

Student: Others have blamed your age, saying you 
had to half-bury your wisdom in filth to make it ac- 
ceptable. 

Rabelais: And you would put this blame on my age? 
And take the full blame for your writing ? 

Student : My writing ? 

Rabelais: Yes, a quatrain, without which I should 
scarcely have come here. 



AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 13 

Sweet C. . . . in h. . . spew up some. . . . 
(pardon me for intruding my own name at this point, 
but even Dante has done the like, with a remark that he 
found it unfitting) — to proceed then: 

some Rabelais 

To and and to define today 

In fitting fashion, and her monument 
Heap up to her in fadeless ex 

Student: My license in those lines is exceptional. 
Rahelais: And you have written on journalists, or 
rather an imaginary plaint of the journalists : 

Where s , s and p on jews conspire, 

And editorial maggots .... about. 

We gather .... -smeared bread, or drive a snout 

Still deeper in the swim-brown of the mire. 

.... Ob b b. . . . 

c .... 's attire 

Smeared with 

Really I can not continue, no printer would pass it. 

Student: Quite out of my usual 

Rahelais: There is still another on publishers, or 
rather on la vie litter aire, a sestina almost wholly in as- 
terisks, and a short strophe on the American president. 

Student: Can you blame ... 

Rahelais: I am scarcely eh. ... . 

Student: Beside, these are but a few scattered out- 
bursts, you kept up your flow through whole volumes. 

Rahelais: You have spent six years in your college 
and university, and a few more in struggles with editors ; 
I had had thirty years in that sink of a cloister, is it 



14 PAVANNES 

likely that your disgusts would need such voluminous 
purging? Consider, when I was nine years of age they 
put me in that louse-breeding abomination. I was forty 
before I broke loose. 

Student: Why at that particular moment? 

Babelais: They had taken away my books. Brother 
Amy got hold of a Virgil. We opened it, sories, the first 
line: 

Hen, fuge crudeles teeras, fuge litus avarum. 
We read that line and departed. You may thank God 
your age is different. You may thank God your life has 
been different. Thirty years mewed up with monks! 
After that can you blame me my style? Have you any 
accurate gauge of stupidities? 

Student: I have, as you admit, passed some years in 
my university. I have seen some opposition to learn- 
ing. 

Rabelais: No one in your day has sworn to annihilate 
the cult of Greek letters; they have not separated you 
from your books ; they have not rung bells expressly to 
keep you from reading. 

Student: Bells! later. There is a pasty-faced vicar 
in Kensington who had his dam'd bells rung over my 
head for four consecutive winters, L'lle Sonnanto trans- 
ferred to the middle of London! They have tried to 
smother the good ones with bad ones. Books I mean, 
God knows the chime was a musicless abomination. 
They have smothered good books with bad ones. 

Rabelais: This will never fool a true poet; for the 
rest, it does not matter whether they drone masses or lec- 
tures. They observe their fasts v/ith the intellect. Have 
they actually sequestered your books ? 

Student: No. But I have a friend, of your order, a 
monk. They took away his book for two years. I ad- 



AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 15 

mit they set him to hearing" confessions; to going about 
in the world. It may have broadened his outlook, or 
benefited his eyesight. I do not think it wholly irra- 
tional, though it must have been extremely annoying. 

Bahelais: Where was it? 

Student: In Spain. 

Bahelais: You are driven south of the Pyrenees to 
find your confuting example. Would you find the like 
in this country? 

Student: I doubt it. The Orders are banished. 

Bahelais: Or in your own? 

Student : Never. 

Bahelais: And you were enraged with your univer- 
sity? 

Student: I thought some of the customs quite stupid. 

Bahelais: Can you conceive a life so infernally and 
abysmally stupid that the air of an university was wine 
and excitement beside it ? 

Student: You speak of a time when scholarship was 
new, when humanism had not given way to philology. 
We have no one like Henry Stephen, no one comparable 
to Helia Andrea. The role of your monastery is now 
assumed by the ''institutions of learning," the spirit of 
your class-room is found among a few scattered en- 
thusiasts, men half ignorant in the present ''scholarly" 
sense, but alive with the spirit of learning, avid of 
truth, avid of beauty, avid of strange and out of the 
way bits of knowledge. Do you like this scrap of Pra- 
tinas ? 

Bahelais (reads) : 

*E/Ao? ifJio<s 6 Bpofiios. 
"Efxe Set KcAaSetv, 
E/tt Set Trarayelv, 
'Av 6p€a €(Tavixevov 



16 PAVANNES 

Mero, NatScov 
Ota T€ KVKvov ayovra 
UoLKiXoTTTepov /xeAos 
Tdv aoiSdv. . . . 

Student: The movement is interesting. I am ''edu- 
cated," I am considerably more than a "graduate." I 
confess that I can not translate it. 

Rahelais: What in God's name have they taught 
you?!! 

Student: I hope they have taught me nothing. I 
managed to read many books despite their attempts at 
suppression, or rather perversion. 

Rahelais: I think you speak in a passion; that you 
magnify petty annoyances. Since then, you have been 
in the world for some years, you have been able to move 
at your freedom. 

Student: I speak in no passion when I say that the 
whole aim, or at least the drive, of modern philology is 
to make a man stupid ; to turn his mind from the fire of 
genius and smother him with things unessential. Ger- 
many has so stultified her savants that they have had no 
present perception, the men who should have perceived 
were all imbedded in "scholarship." And as for free- 
dom, no man is free who has not the modicum of an in- 
come. If I had but fifty francs weekly 

Rahelais: Weekly? C J. . . . ! 

Student: You forget that the value of money has 
very considerably altered. 

Rahelais: Admitted. 

Student: Well? 

Rahelais: Well, who has constrained you? The 
press in your day is free. 

Student: C J. . . . ! 

Rahelais: But the press in your day is free. 



AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 17 

Student: There is not a book goes to the press in my 
country, or in England, but a society of ....... in 

one, or in the other a pie-headed ignorant printer paws 
over it to decide how much is indecent. 

Eahelais: But they print my works in translation. 

Student: Your work is a classic. They also print 
Trimalcio's '' Supper," and the tales of Suetonius, and 
red-headed virgins annotate the writings of Martial, but 
let a novelist mention a priwy, or a poet the rear side of 
a woman, and the whole town reeks with an uproar. In 
England a scientific work was recently censored. A 
great discovery was kept secret three years. For the 
rest, I do not speak of obscenity. Obscene books are sold 
in the rubber shops, they are doled out with quack medi- 
cines, societies for the Suppression of Vice go into all 
details, and thereby attain circulation. Masterpieces are 
decked out with lewd covers to entoil one part of the 
public, but let an unknown man write clear and clean 
realism; let a poet use the speech of his predecessors, 
either being as antiseptic as the instruments of a sur- 
geon, and out of the most debased and ignorant classes 
they choose him his sieve and his censor. 

Rabelais: But surely these things are avoidable? 

Student: The popular novelist, the teaser and tickler, 
casts what they call a veil, or caul, over his language. 
He pimps with suggestion. The printer sees only one 
word at a time, and tons of such books are passed yearly, 
the members of the Royal Automobile Club and of the 
Isthmian and Fly Fishers are not concerned with the 
question of morals. 

Rabelais: You mistake me, I did not mean this sort 
of evasion, I did not mean that a man should ruin his 
writing or join the ranks of procurers. 

Student: Well? 



18 PAVANNES 

Bahelais: Other means. There is what is called pri- 
vate printing. 

Student: I have had a printer refuse to print lines 
''in any form" private or public, perfectly innocent 
lines, lines refused thus in London, which appeared and 
caused no blush in Chicago ; and vice-versa, lines refused 
in Chicago and printed by a fat-headed prude — Oh, 
most fat-headed — in London, a man who will have no 
ruffling of anyone's skirts, and who will not let you say 
that some children do not enjoy the proximity of their 
parents. 

Babelais: At least you are free from theology. 

Student: If you pinch the old whore by the toes you 
will find a press clique against you; you will come up 
against "boycott"; people will rush into your publish- 
er's office with threats. Have you ever heard of ''the 
libraries ' ' ? 

Babelais: I have heard the name, but not associated 
with strange forms of blackmail. 

Student: I admit they do not affect serious writers. 

Babelais: But you think your age as stupid as mine. 

Student: Humanity is a herd, eaten by perpetual 
follies. A few in each age escape, the rest remain sav- 
ages, ' ' That deyed the Arbia crimson. ' ' Were the shores 
of Gallipoli paler, that showed red to the airmen flying 
thousands of feet above them ? 

Babelais: Airmen. Intercommunication is civiliza- 
tion. Your life is full of convenience. 

Student: And men as stupid as ever. We have no 
one like Henry Stephen. Have you ever read Galdos' 
"Dona Perfecta"? In every country you will find such 
nests of provincials. Change but a few names and cus- 
toms. Each Klein-Stadt has its local gods and will kill 
those who offend them. In one place it is religion, in 



AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 19 

another some crank theory of hygiene or morals, or even 
of prudery which takes no moral concern. 

Rabelais: Yet all peoples act the same way. The 
same so-called "vices" are everywhere present, unless 
your nation has invented some new ones. 

Student: Greed and hypocrisy, there is little novelty 
to be got out of either. At present there is a new tone, 
a new timbre of lying, a sort of habit, almost a faculty 
for refraining from connecting words with a fact. An 
inconception of their interrelations. 

Rabelais: Let us keep out of politics. 

Student: Damn it, have you ever met presbyterians ? 

Rabelais: You forget that I lived in the time of John 
Calvin. 

Student : Let us leave this and talk of your books. 

Rabelais: My book has the fault of most books, there 
are too many words in it. I was tainted with monkish 
habits, with the marasmus of allegory, of putting one 
thing for another: the clumsiest method of satire. I 
doubt if any modem will read me. 

Student: I knew a man read you for joy of the words, 
for the opulence of your vocabulary. 

Rabelais: Which would do him no good unless he 
could keep all the words on his tongue. Tell me, can 
you read them, they are often merely piled up in heaps. 

Student : I confess that I can not. I take a page and 
then stop. 

Rabelais: Allegory, all damnable allegory ! Andean 
you read Brantome ? 

Student: I can read a fair chunk of Brantome. The 
repetition is wearing. 

Rabelais: And you think your age is as stupid as 
mine? Even letters are better, a critical sense is de- 
veloped. 



^1 



20 PAYANNES 

Student: We lack the old vigour. 

Bahelais: A phrase you have got from professors! 
Vigour was not lacking in Stendhal, I doubt if it is lack- 
ing in your day. And as for the world being as stupid, 
are your friends tied to the stake, as was Etienne Dolet, 
with an ''Ave" wrung out of him to get him strangled 
instead of roasted. Do you have to stand making pro- 
fessions like Bude ? ! ! 

Vivens vidensque gloria mea frui 

Volo : nihil juvat mortuum 

Quod vel diserte scripserit vel fecerit 

Animose. 

Student: What is that? 

Bahelais: Some verses of Dolet 's. And are you 
starved like Desperiers, Bonaventura, and driven to 
suicide ? 

Student: The last auto-da-fe was in 1759. The in- 
quisition re-established in 1824. 

Bahelais: Spain again! I was speaking of . . . 

Student: We are not yet out of the wood. There is 
no end to this warfare. You talk of freedom. Have 
you heard of the Hammersmith borough council, or the 
society to suppress all brothels in "Rangoon and other 
stations in Burmah"? If it is not creed it is morals. 
Your life and works would not be possible nowadays. 
To put it mildly, you would be docked your professor- 
ship. 

Bahelais: I should find other forms of freedom. As 
for personal morals: There are certain so-called "sins" 
of which no man ever repented. There are certain con- 
traventions of hygiene which always prove inconvenient. 
None biit superstitious and ignorant people can ever 



AN ANACHRONISM AT CHINON 21 

confuse these two issues. And as hygiene is always 
changing; as it alters with our knowledge of physick, 
intelligent men will keep pace with it. There can be no 
permanent boundaries to morals. 

Student: The droits du seigneur were doubtless, at 
one time, religious. When ecclesiastics enjoyed them, 
they did so, in order to take the vengeance of the spirit- 
world upon their own shoulders, thereby shielding and 
sparing the husband. 

Rabelais: Indeed you are far past these things. Your 
age no longer accepts them. 

Student: My age is beset with cranks of all forms 
and sizes. They will not allow a man wine. They will 
not allow him changes of women. This glass 

Eahelais: There is still some in the last bottle. De- 
Thou has paid it a compliment : 

Aussi Bacchus .... 
Jusqu'en I'autre monde m'envoye 
De quoi dissiper mon chagrin, 
Car de ma Maison patemelle 
II vient de faire un Cabaret 
Ou le plaisir se renouvelle 
Entre le blanc et le clairet. . . 
On n'y porte plus sa pensee 
Qu'aux douceurs d'un Vin frais et net. 
Que si Pluton, que rien ne tente, 
Vouloit se payer de raison, 
Et permettre a mon Ombre errante 
De faire un tour a ma Maison ; 
Quelque prix que j 'eu piisse attendre, 
Ce seroit mon premier souhait 
De la louer ou de la vendre, 
Pour Tusage que Ton en fait. 



22 PAVANNES 

Student: There are states where a man's tobacco is 
not safe from invasion. Bishops, novelists, decrepit and 
aged generals, purveyors of tales of detectives 

Bahelais: Have they ever interfered with your pleas- 
ures? 

Student : Damn well let them try it ! ! ! 

Bahelais: I am afraid you would have been burned 
in my century. 



RELIGIO, 

OR THE child's GUIDE TO KNOWLEDGE 

What is a god ? 

A god is an eternal state of mind. 

What is a faun? 

A faun is an elemental creature. 

What is a nymph ? 

A nymph is an elemental creature. 

When is a god manifest? 

When the states of mind take form. 

When does a man become a god ? 

When he enters one of these states of mind. 

What is the nature of the forms whereby a god is 
manifest ? 

They are variable but retain certain distinguishing 
characteristics. 

Are all eternal states of mind gods? 

We consider them so to be. 

Are all durable states of mind gods? 

They are not. 

By what characteristic may we know the divine forms ? 

By beauty. 

And if the presented forms are unbeautiful? 

They are demons. 

If they are grotesque? 

They may be well-minded genii. 

What are the kinds of knowledge ? 

There are immediate knowledge and hearsay. 

23 



24 PAVANNES 

Is hearsay of any value ? 

Of some. 

What is the greatest hearsay ? 

The greatest hearsay is the tradition of the gods. 

Of what use is this tradition ? 

It tells us to be ready to look. 

In what manner do gods appear? 

Formed and formlessly. 

To what do they appear when formed ? 

To the sense of vision. 

And when formless? 

To the sense of knowledge. 

May they when formed appear to anything save the 
sense of vision ? 

We may gain a sense of their presence as if they were 
standing behind us. 

And in this case they may possess form ? 

We may feel that they do possess form. 

Are there names for the gods ? 

The gods have many names. It is by names that they 
are handled in the tradition. 

Is there harm in using these names? 

There is no harm in thinking of the gods by their 
names. 

How should one perceive a god, by his name ? 

It is better to perceive a god by form, or by the sense 
of knowledge, and, after perceiving him thus, to con- 
sider his name or to ''think what god it may be." 

Do we know the number of the gods ? 

It would be rash to say that we do. A man should 
be content with a reasonable number. 

What are the gods of this rite? 

Apollo, and in some sense Helios, Diana in some of 
her phases, also the Cytherean goddess. 



RELIGIO 25 

To what other gods is it fitting, in harmony or in 
adjunction with these rites, to give incense? 

To Kore and to Demeter, also to lares and to oreiads 
and to certain elemental creatures. 

How is it fitting to please these lares and other crea- 
tures ? 

It is fitting to please and to nourish them with flow- 
ers. 

Do they have need of such nutriment ? 

It would be foolish to believe that they have, never- 
theless it bodes well for us that they should be pleased 
to appear. 

Are these things so in the East? 

This rite is made for the West. 



AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN 
A.D. 1451 

They entered hetween two fir trees. A path of irreg- 
ular flat pentagonal stones led along between shruhhery. 
Halting hy the central court in a sort of narrow gallery, 
the large tank was helow them, and in it some thirty or 
forty hlond nereides for the most part well-muscled, with 
smooth flaxen hair and smooth faces — a generic resem- 
blance. A slender hrown wench sat at one end list- 
lessly dahhlvfig her feet from the spring-hoard. Here 
the water was deeper. 

The rest of them, all being clothed in white linen 
shifts held up hy one strap over the shoulder and reach- 
ing half-way to the knees, — the rest of them waded waist- 
and hreast-deep in the shallower end of the pool, their 
shifts hellied up hy the air, spread out like huge hohhing 
cauliflowers. 

The whole tank was sunken heneath the level of the 
gardens, and paved and panelled with marhle, a rather 
cheap marhle. To the left of the little gallery, where 
the strangers had halted, an ample dowager sat in a per- 
fectly circular tuh formed rather like the third of an 
hogshead, behind her a small hemicycle of yew trees 
kept off any chance draught from the North. She like- 
wise wore a shift of white linen. On a plank before her, 
reaching from the left to the right side of her tank- 
hogshead, were a salver with a large piece of raw smoked 
ham, a few leeks, a tankard of darkish beer, a back- 
scratcher, the ham-knife. 

26 



AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN 27 

Before them, from some sheds, there arose a faint 
steam, the sound of grunts and squeals and an aroma of 
elderly bodies. From the opposite gallery a white- 
bearded town-councillor began to throw grapes to the 
nereides. 

Le Sieur de Maunsier: They have closed these places 
in Marseilles, causa flagitii, they were thought to be bad 
for our morals. 

Poggio : And are your morals improved ? 

Mammer: Nein, bin nicht verbessert. 

Poggio : And are the morals of Marseilles any better ? 

Maunsier: Not that I know of. Assignations are 
equally frequent ; the assignors less cleanly ; their health, 
I presume, none the better. The Church has always 
been dead set against washing. St. Clement of Alexan- 
dria forbade all bathing by women. He made no excep- 
tion. Baptism and the last oiling were enough, to his 
thinking. St. Augustine, more genial and human, took 
a bath to console himself for the death of his mother. 
I suspect that it was a hot one. Being clean is a pagan 
virtue, and no part of the light from Judaea. 

Poggio: Say rather a Roman, the Greek philosophers 
died, for the most part, of lice. Only the system of 
empire, plus a dilettantism in luxuries, could have 
brought mankind to the wash-tub. The christians have 
made dirt a matter of morals: a son of God can have 
no need to be cleansed ; a worm begotten in sin and fore- 
doomed to eternal damnation in a bottle of the seven 
great stenches, would do ill to refine his nostrils and 
unfit himself for his future. For the elect and the re- 
jected alike, washing is either noxious or useless — they 
must be transcendent at all costs. The rest of the world 
must be like them ; they therefore look after our morals. 



28 PAVANNES . 

Yet this last term is wholly elastic. There is no system 
which has not been tried, wedlock or unwedlock, a breed- 
ing on one mare or on many ; all with equal success, with 
equal flaws, crimes, and discomforts. 

Maunsier: I have heard there was no adultery found 
in Sparta. 

Poggio: There was no adultery among the Lacedae- 
monians because they held all women in common. A 
rumour of Troy had reached the ears of Lycurgus : ' ' So 
Lycurgus thought also there were many foolish vain joys 
and fancies, in the laws and orders of other nations, 
touching marriage : seeing they caused their bitches and 
mares to be lined and covered with the fairest dogs 
and goodliest stallions that might be gotten, praying 
and paying the maisters and owners of the same: and 
kept their wives notwithstanding shut up safe under 
lock and key, for fear lest other than themselves might 
get them with child, although themselves were sickly, 
feeble-brained, extreme old." I think I quote rightly 
from Plutarch. The girls of Lacedaemon played naked 
before the young men, that their defects should be rem- 
edied rather than hidden. A man first went by stealth 
to his mistress, and this for a long space of time; thus 
learning address and silence. For better breeding Ly- 
curgus would not have children the property of any one 
man, but sought only that they should be born of the 
lustiest women, begotten of -the most vigorous seed. 

Maunsier: Christianity would put an end to all that, 
yet I think there was some trace left in the lex Germanica, 
and some in our Provengal love customs; for under the 
first a woman kept whatever man she liked, so long as 
she fancied : the children being brought up by her broth- 
ers, being a part of the female family, cognati. The 
chivalric system is smothered with mysticism, and is 



AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN 29 

focussed all upon pleasure, but the habit of older folk- 
custom is at the base of its freedoms, its debates were 
on matters of modus. 

These girls look very well in their shifts. They con- 
found the precepts of temperance. 

Poggio: I have walked and ridden through Europe, 
annoting, observing. I am interested in food and the 
animal. 

There was, before I left Rome, a black woman for sale 
in the market. Her breasts stuck out like great funnels, 
her shoulders were rounded like basins, her biceps was 
that of a wheel-wright ; these upper, portions of her, to 
say nothing of her flattened-in face, were disgusting and 
hideous, but she had a belly like Venus, from below the 
breasts to the crotch she was like a splendid Greek frag- 
ment. She came of a tropical meat-eating tribe. I ob- 
serve that gramenivorous and fruit-eating races have 
shrunken arms and shoulders, narrow backs and weakly 
distended stomachs. Much beer enlarges the girth in 
old age, at a time when the form in any case, might 
have ceased to give pleasure. The men of this nubian 
tribe were not lovely; they were shaped rather like al- 
monds : the curious roundness in the front aspect, a grad- 
ual sloping-in toward the feet, a very great muscular 
power, a silhouette not unlike that of an egg, or perhaps 
more like that of a tadpole. 

Civilized man grows more frog-like, his members be- 
come departmental. 

Maunsier: But fixed. Man falls into a set gamut of 
types. His thoughts also. The informed and the un- 
informed, the clodhopper and the civilian are equally in- 
capable of trusting an unwonted appearance. Last week 
I met an exception, and for that cause the matter is now 
in my mind, and I am, as they say ''forming conclu- 



30 PAVANNES 

sions.'' The exception, an Englishman, had found a 
parochial beauty in Savoia, in the inn of a mountain 
town, a ''local character" as he called her. He could not 
describe her features with any minute precision, but she 
wore, he remembered, a dress tied up with innumerable 
small bits of ribbon in long narrow bow-knots, limp, 
hanging like grass-blades caught in the middle. She 
came in to him as a sort of exhibit. He kissed her hand. 
She sat by his bedside and conversed with him pleasantly. 
They were quite alone for some time. Nothing more 
happened. From something in his manner, I am in- 
clined to believe him. He was convinced that nothing 
more ever did happen. 

Poggio: Men have a curious desire for uniformity. 
Bawdry and religion are all one before it. 

Maunsier: They call it the road to salvation. 

Poggio: They ruin the shape of life for a dogmatic 
exterior. What dignity have we over the beasts, save 
to be once, and to be irreplaceable ! 

I myself am a rag-bag, a mass of sights and citations, 
but I will not beat down life for the sake of a model. 

Maunsier: Would you be ''without an ideal?" 

Poggio: Is beauty an ideal like the rest? I confess 
I see the need of no other. When I read that from the 
breast of the Princess Hellene there was cast a cup of 
"white gold," the sculptor finding no better model; and 
that this cup was long shown in the temple at Lyndos, 
which is in the island of Rhodes ; or when I read, as I 
think is the textual order, first of the cup and then of 
its origin, there comes upon me a discontent with human 
imperfection. I am no longer left in the ' ' slough of the 
senses," but am full of heroic life, for the instant. The 
sap mounts in the twigs of my being. 



AUX ETUVES DE WIESBADEN 31 

The visions of the mystics give them like courage, it 
may be. 

Maunsier: My poor uncle, he will talk of the slough 
of the senses and the "loathsome pit of contentment." 
His * ' ideas ' ' are with other men 's conduct. He seeks to 
set bounds to their actions. 

I cannot make out the mystics; nor how far we may 
trust to our senses, and how far to sudden sights that 
come from within us, or at least seem to spring up within 
us : a mirage, an elf -music ; and how far we are prey to 
the written word. 

Poggio: I have seen many women in dreams, sur- 
passing most mortal women, but I doubt if I have on 
their account been stirred to more thoughts of beauty, 
than I have had meditating upon that passage in latin, 
concerning the temple of Pallas at Lyndos and its me- 
morial cup of white gold. I do not count myself among 
Plato's disciples. 

Maunsier: And yet it is forced upon us that all these 
things breed their fanatics; that even a style might be- 
come a religion and breed bigots as many, and pestilent. 

Poggio: Our blessing is to live in an age when some 
can hold a fair balance. It can not last ; many are half- 
drunk with freedom; a greed for taxes at Rome will 
raise up envy, a cultivated court will disappear in the 
ensuing reaction. We are fortunate to live in the wink, 
the eye of mankind is open ; for an instant, hardly more 
than an instant. Men are prized for being unique. I 
do not mean merely fantastic. That is to say there 
are a few of us who can prize a man for thinking, in 
himself, rather than for a passion to make others think 
with him. 

Perhaps you are right about style ; an established style 



32 PAVANNES 

could be as much a nuisance as any other establishment. 
Yet there must be a reputable normal. Tacitus is too 
crabbed. The rhetoricians ruined the empire. Let us 
go on to our baths. 



L 'HOMME MO YEN SENSUEL ^ 

'*I hate a dumpy woman" 

— George Gordon, Lord Byron. 

'Tis of my country that I would endite, 
In hope to set some misconceptions right. 
My country ? I love it well, and those good fellows 
Who, since their wit's unknown, escape the gallows. 
But you stuffed coats who 're neither tepid nor dis- 
tinctly boreal, 
' Pimping, conceited, placid, editorial. 

Could I but speak as 'twere in the "Restoration" 
I would articulate your per damnation. 
This year perforce I must with circumspection — 
For Mencken states somewhere, in this connection : 
" It is a moral nation we infest. ' ' 

1 \j!^ote: It is through no fault of my own that this diversion 
was not given to the reader two years ago; but the commercial 
said it would not add to their transcendent popularity, and the 
vers-libre fanatics pointed out that I had used a form of terminal 
consonance no longer permitted, and my admirers (i'ew ai) , ever 
nobly desirous of erecting me into a sort of national institution, 
declared the work "unworthy" of my mordant and serious genius. 
So a couple of the old gentlemen are dead in the interim, and, 
alas, two of the great men mentioned in passing, and the reader 
will have to accept the opusculus for what it is, some rhymes 
written in 1915. I would give them now with dedication "To the 
Anonymous Compatriot Who Produced the Poem 'Fanny,' Some- 
where About 1820", if this form of centennial homage be per- 
mitted me. It was no small thing to have written, in America, 
at that distant date, a poem of over forty pages which one can 
still read without labour. E. P.] 

33 



34 PAVANNES 

Despite such reins and checks I '11 do my best, 

An art! You all respect the arts, from that infant 

tick 
Who's now the editor of The Atlantic, 
From Comstock's self, down to the meanest resident. 
Till up again, right up, we reach the president, 
Who shows his taste in his ambassadors: 
A novelist, a publisher, to pay old scores, 
A novelist, a publisher and a preacher. 
That's sent to Holland, a most particular feature, 
Henry Van Dyke, who thinks to charm the Muse you 

pack her in 
A sort of stinking diliquescent saccharine. 
The constitution of our land, Socrates, 
Was made to incubate such mediocrities. 
These and a taste in books that 's grown perennial 
And antedates the Philadelphia centennial. 
Still I'd respect you more if you could bury 
Mabie, and Lyman Abbot and George Woodberry, 
For minds so wholly founded upon quotations 
Are not the best of pulse for infant nations. 
Dulness herself, that abject spirit, chortles 
To see your forty self-baptized immortals. 
And holds her sides where swelling laughter cracks 

'em 
Before the *'Ars Poetica" of Hiram Maxim. 
All one can say of this refining medium 
Is '^ Zut! Cinque lettres!" a banished gallic idiom, 
Their doddering ignorance is waxed so notable 
'Tis time that it was capped with something quotable. 

Here Radway grew, the fruit of pantosocracy. 
The very fairest flower of their gynocracy. 
Radway? My hero, for it will be more inspiring 



L 'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL 35 

If I set forth a bawdy plot like Byron 

Than if I treat the nation as a whole. 

Radway grew up. These forces shaped his soul ; 

These, and yet God, and Dr. Parkhurst's god, the 

N. Y. Journal 
(Which pays him more per week than The Supernal) . 
These and another godlet of that day, your day 
(You feed a hen on grease, perhaps she'll lay 
The sterile egg that is still eatable : 
'Prolific Noyes" with output undef eatable). 
From these he (Radway) learnt, from provosts and 

from editors unyielding 
And innocent of Stendhal, Flaubert, Maupassant and 

Fielding. 
They set their mind (it's still in that condition) — 
May we repeat; the Centennial Exposition 
At Philadelphia, 1876 ? 

What it knew then, it knows, and there it sticks. 
And yet another, a '^ charming man," ''sweet nature," 

but was Gilder, 
De mortuis verum, truly the master builder? 

From these he learnt. Poe, Whitman, Whistler, men, 

their recognition 
Was got abroad, what better luck do you wish 'em, 
When writing well has not yet been forgiven 
In Boston, to Henry James, the greatest whom we've 

seen living. 
And timorous love of the innocuous 
Brought from Gt. Britain and dumped down a 'top 

of us. 
Till you may take your choice: to feel the edge of 

satire or 
Read Bennett or some other flaccid flatterer. 



36 PAVANNES 

Despite it all, despite your Red Bloods, febrile con- 
cupiscence 
Whose blubbering yowls you take for passion's es- 
sence ; 
Despite it all, your compound predilection 
For ignorance, its growth and its protection 
(Vide the tariff), I will hang simple facts 
Upon a tale, to combat other facts, 
''Message to Garcia," Mosher's propagandas 
That are the nation's botts, collicks and glanders. 
Or from the feats of Sumner cull it ? Think, 
Could Freud or Jung unf athom such a sink 1 

My hero, Radway, I have named, in truth. 
Some forces among those which ''formed" his youth: 
These heavy weights, these dodgers and these preach- 
ers. 
Crusaders, lecturers and secret lechers. 
Who wrought about his "soul" their stale infection. 
These are the high-brows, add to this collection 
The social itch, the almost, all but, not quite, fasci- 
nating, 
Piquante, delicious, luscious, captivating: 
Puffed satin, and silk stockings, where the knee 
Clings to the skirt in strict (vide: ''Vogue'') pro- 
priety. 
Three thousand chorus girls and all unkissed, 
state sans song, sans home-grown wine, sans real- 
ist! 
' ' Tell me not in mournful wish-wash 
Life 's a sort of sugared dish-wash ' ' ! 
Radway had read the various evening papers 
And yearned to imitate the Waldorf capers 
As held before him in that unsullied mirror 



L 'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL 37 

The daily press, and monthlies nine cents dearer. 
They held the very marrow of the ideals 
That fed his spirit ; were his mental meals. 
Also, he'd read of christian virtues in 
That canting rag called Everybody's Magazine, 
And heard a clergy that tries on more wheezes 
Than e 'er were heard of by Our Lord Ch . . . . J . . . . 
So he "faced life" with rather mixed intentions, 
He had attended country Christian Endeavour Con- 
ventions, 
Where one gets more chances 
Than Spanish ladies had in old romances. 
(Let him rebuke who ne'er has known the pure Pla- 
tonic grapple, 
Or hugged two girls at once behind a chapel.) 
Such practices diluted rural boredom 
Though some approved of them, and some deplored 

'em. 
Such was he when he got his mother 's letter 
And would not think a thing that could upset her. . . . 
Yet saw an ''ad." ''To-night, THE HUDSON 

SAIL, 
With forty queens, and music to regale 
The select company : beauties you all would know 
By name, if named." So it was phrased, or rather 

somewhat so 
I have mislaid the "ad.," but note the touch, 
Note, reader, note the sentimental touch : 
His mother's birthday gift. (How pitiful 
That only sentimental stuff will sell!) 

Yet Radway went. A circumspections prig! 
And then that woman like a guinea-pig 
Accosted, that's the word, accosted him, 



38 PAVANNES 

Thereon the amorous calor slightly frosted him. 
(I bum, I freeze, I sweat, said the fair Greek, 
I speak in contradictions, so to speak.) 

I've told his training, he was never bashful, 
And his pockets by ma's aid, that night with cash full, 
The invitation had no need of fine assthetic. 
Nor did disgust prove such a strong emetic 
That we, with Masefield's vein, in the next sentence 
Record ''Odd's blood! Ouch! Ouch!" a prayer, his 
swift repentance. 

No, no, they danced. The music grew much louder 
As he inhaled the still fumes of rice-powder. 
Then there came other nights, came slow but certain 
And were such nights that we should ''draw the cur- 
tain" 
In writing fiction on uncertain chances 
Of publication; "Circumstances," 
As the editor of The Century says in print, 
"Compel a certain silence and restraint." 
Still we will bring our ' ' fiction as near to fact ' ' as 
The Sunday school brings virtues into practice. 

Soon our hero could manage once a week, 

Not that his pay had risen, and no leak 

Was found in his employer's cash. He learned the 

lay of cheaper places. 
And then Radway began to go the paces : 
A rosy path, a sort of vernal ingress. 
And Truth should here be careful of her thin dress — 
Though males of seventy, who fear truths naked harm 

us. 
Must think Truth looks as they do in wool pyjamas. 



L 'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL 39 

(My country, I've said your morals and your thoughts 

are stale ones, 
But surely the worst of your old-women are the male 

ones.) 

Why paint these days? An insurance inspector 

For fires and odd risks, could in this sector 

Furnish more date for a compilation 

Than I can from this distant land and station, 

Unless perhaps I should have recourse to 

One of those firm-faced inspecting women, who 

Find pretty Irish girls in Chinese laundries. 

Up stairs, the third floor up, and have such quandaries 

As to how and why and whereby they got in 

And for what earthly reason they remain. . . . 

Alas, eheu, one question that sorely vexes 

The serious social folk is ''just what sex is.'' 

Though it will, of course, pass off with social science 

In which their mentors place such wide reliance. 

De Gourmont says that fifty grunts are all that will be 

prized. 
Of language, by men wholly socialized, 
With signs as many, that shall represent 'em 
When thoroughly socialized printers want to print 'em. 
"As free of mobs as kings"? I'd have men free of 

that invidious. 
Lurking, serpentine, amphibious and insidious 
Power that compels 'em 

To be so much alike that every dog that smells 'em, 
Thinks one identitj^ is 
Smeared o 'er the lot in equal quantities. 
Still we look toward the day when man, with unction, 
Will long only to be a social function^ 
And even Zeus' wild lightning fear to strike 



40 PAVANNES 

Lest it should fail to treat all men alike. 
And I can hear an old man saying : ' ' Oh, the rub ! 
''I see them sitting in the Harvard Club, 
''And rate 'em up at just so much per head, 
''Know what they think, and just w^hat books they've 

read, 
' ' Till I have viewed straw hats and their habitual cloth- 
ing 
"All the same style, same cut, with perfect loathing." 

So Radway walked, quite like the other men. 

Out into the crepuscular half-light, now and then ; 

Saw what the city offered, cast an eye 

Upon Manhattan 's gorgeous panoply. 

The flood of limbs upon Eighth Avenue 

To beat Prague, Budapesth, Vienna or Moscow,^ 

Such animal invigorating carriage 

As nothing can restrain or much disparage. . . . 

Still he was not given up to brute enjoyment, 

An anxious sentiment was his employment, 

For memory of the first warm night still cast a haze 

o'er 
The mind of Radway, whene'er he found a pair of 

purple stays or 
Some other quaint reminder of the occasion 
That first made him believe in immoral suasion. 
A temperate man, a thin potationist, each day 
A silent hunter off the Great White Way, 
He read The Century and thought it nice 
To be not too well known in haunts of vice — 
The prominent haunts, where one might recognize 

him. 
And in his daily walks duly capsize him. 

1 Pronounce like respectable Russians : "Mussqu." 



L 'HOMME MOYEN SENSUEL 41 

Thus he eschewed the bright red-walled cafes and 
Was never one of whom one speaks as '' brazen 'd." 

Some men will live as prudes in their own village 
And make the tour abroad for their wild tillage — 
I knew a tourist agent, one w^hose art is 
To run such tours. He calls 'em house par- 
ties. 
But Radway was a patriot whose venality 
Was purer in its love of one locality, 
A home-industrious worker to perfection, 
A senatorial jobber for protection, 
Especially on books, lest knowledge break in 
Upon the national brains and set 'em achin'. 
( 'Tis an anomaly in our large land of freedom, 
You can not get cheap books, even if you need 'em). 
Radway was ignorant as an editor, 
And. heavenly, holy gods! I can't say more, 
Though I know one, a very base detractor. 
Who has the phrase ' ' As ignorant as an actor. ' ' 

But turn to Radway : the first night on the river, 
Running so close to ' ' hell ' ' it sends a shiver 
Down Rodyheaver's prophylactic spine. 
Let me return to this bold theme of mine, 
Of Radway. clap hand ye moralists ! 
And meditate upon the Lord's conquests. 
When last I met him, he was a pillar in 
An organization for the suppression of sin .... 
Not that he 'd changed his tastes, nor yet his habits, 
(Such changes don't occur in men, or rabbits). 
Not that he was a saint, nor was top-loftical 
In spiritual aspirations, but he found it profitable. 
For as Ben Franklin said, with such urbanity : 
''Nothing will pay thee, friend, like Christianity." 



42 PAVANNES 

And in our day thus saith the Evangelist : 
*'Tent preachin' is the kind that pays the best." 

'Twas as a business asset pure an' simple 

That Radway joined the Baptist Broadway Temple. 

I find no moral for a peroration, 
He is the prototype of half the nation. 



PIERROTS 

From the French of Jules Laforgue 

(Scene courte mais typique) 

Your eyes ! Since I lost their incandescence 

Flat calm engulphs my jibs, 

The shudder of Vae soli gurgles beneath my ribs. 

You should have seen me after the affray, 
I rushed about in the most agitated way 
Crying: My God, my God, what will she say?! 

My soul's antennae are prey to such perturbations, 
Wounded by your indirectness in these situations 
And your bundle of mundane complications. 

Your eyes put me up to it. 

I thought : Yes, divine, these eyes, but what exists 
Behind them? What's there? Her soul's an affair 
for oculists. 

And I am sliced with loyal aesthetics. 
Hate tremolos and national frenetics. 
In brief, violet is the ground tone of my phonetics. 

I am not ''that chap there" nor yet ''The Superb" 
But my soul, the sort which harsh sounds disturb, 
Is, at bottom, distinguished and fresh as a March herb. 

43 



44 PAVANNES 

My nerves still register the sounds of contra-bass', 
I can walk about without fidgeting when people pass, 
Without smirking into a pocket-looking-glass. 

Yes, I have rubbed shoulders and knocked off my 

chips 
Outside your set but, having kept faith in your eyes. 
You might pardon such slips. 
Eh, make it up ? 

Soothings, confessions ; 
These new concessions 
Hurl me into such a mass of divergent impressions. 



STARK REALISM 

This Little Pig Went to Market 
{A Search for the National Type) 

This little American went to Vienna. He said it was 
''Gawd's Owne City." He knew all the bath-houses 
and dance halls. He was there for a week. He never 
forgot it — No, not even when he became a Captain in 
the Great American Navy and spent six months in 
Samoa. 

This little American went West — to the Middle-West, 
where he came from. He smoked cigars, for cigarettes 
are illegal in Indiana, that land where Lew Wallace died, 
that land of the literary tradition. He ate pie of all 
sorts, and read the daily papers — especially those of 
strong local interest. He despised European culture as 
an indiscriminate whole. 

Peace to his ashes. 

This little American went to the great city Manhattan. 
He made two dollars and a half per week. He saw the 
sheeny girls on the East Side who lunch on two cents 
worth of bread and sausages, and dress with a flash on 
the remainder. He nearly died of it. Then he got a 
rise. He made fifteen dollars per weeek selling insur- 
ance. He wore a monocle with a tortoise-shell rim. He 

45 



46 PAVANNES 

dressed up to ''Bond St." No lord in The Row has 
surpassed him. 

He was a damn good fellow. 

This little American went to Oxford. He rented Oscar's 
late rooms. He talked about the nature of the Beautiful. 
He swam in the wake of Santyana. He had a great cut 
glass bowl full of lilies. He believed in Sin. His life 
was immaculate. He was the last convert to Catholicism. 

This little American had always been adored — and quite 
silent. He was bashful. He rowed on his college crew. 
He had a bright pink complexion. He was a dealer in 
bonds, but not really wicked. He would walk into a 
man 's office and say : ' ' Do you want any stock ? . . eh 
.... eh .. I don't know anything about it. They say 
it's all right." Some people like that sort of thing; 
though it is not the "ideal business man" as you read 
of him in Success and in Mr. Lorimer's papers. 

This little American had rotten luck ; he was educated— 
soundly and thoroughly educated. His mother always 
bought his underwear by the dozen, so that he should 
be thoroughly supplied. He went from bad to worse, 
and ended as a dishwasher; always sober and indus- 
trious; he began as paymaster in a copper mine. He 
made hollow tiles in Michigan. 

His end was judicious. 

This little American spoke through his nose, because he 
had catarrh or consumption. His scholastic merits were 
obvious. He studied Roumanian and Arumaic. He 
married a papal countess. 

Peace to his ashes. 



TWELVE 
DIALOGUES OF 
FONTENELLE 



ALEXANDER AND PHRINE 

Phrine. You could learn it from all the Thebans who 
lived in my time. They will tell you that I offered to 
restore at my own expense the walls of Thebes which 
you had ruined, provided that they inscribe them as fol- 
lows: Alexander the Great had cast down these walls, 
the courtezan Phrine rebuilt them. 

Alexander. Were you so afraid that future ages 
would forget what profession you followed? 

Phrine. I excelled in it, and all extraordinary people, 
of whatever profession, have been mad about monuments 
and inscriptions. 

Alexander. It is true that Rhodope preceded you. 
The usufruct of her beauty enabled her to build a fa- 
mous pyramid still standing in Egypt, and I remember 
that when she was speaking of it the other day to the 
shades of certain French women who supposed them- 
selves well worth loving, they began to weep, saying 
that in the country and ages wherein they had so recently 
lived, pretty women could not earn enough to build 
pyramids. 

Phrine. Yet I had the advantage over Rhodope, for 
by restoring the Theban walls I brought myself into 
comparison with you who had been the greatest con- 
queror in the world ; I made it apparent that my beauty 
was enough to repair the ravages caused by your valour. 

Alexander. A new comparison. You were then so 
proud of your gallantries ? 

49 



50 FONTENELLE 

Phrine. And you? "Were you so well content with 
having laid waste a good half of the universe? Had 
there been but a Phrine in each of the ruined cities, 
there would remain no trace of your ravages. 

Alexander. If I should ever live again I would wish 
to be an illustrious conqueror. 

Phrine. And I a lovable conqueress. Beauty has a 
natural right to command men, valour has nothing but 
a right acquired by force. A beautiful woman is of all 
countries, yet kings themselves and even conquerors are 
not. For better argument, your father Philip was val- 
iant enough and you also ; neither of you could rouse the 
slightest fear in Demosthenes, who during the whole 
coUrse of his life did nothing but make violent speeches 
against you; yet when another Phrine (for the name is 
a lucky name) was about to lose a case of considerable 
importance, her lawyer, having used his eloquence all 
in vain, snatched aside the great veil which half covered 
her, and the judges who were ready to condemn her, 
put aside their intention at the sight of her beauties. 
The reputation of your arms, having a great space of 
years to accomplish the object, could not keep one orator 
quiet, yet a fair body corrupted the whole severe Areo- 
pagus on the instant. 

Alexander. Though you have called another Phrine 
to your aid, I do not think you have weakened the case 
for Alexander. It would be a great pity if ... . 

Phrine. I know what you are going to say : Greece, 
Asia, Persia, the Indes, they are a very fine shopful. 
However, if I cut away from your glory all that does 
not belong to you ; if I give your soldiers, your captains, 
and even chance what is due to them, do you think your 
loss would be slight ? But a fair woman shares the hon- 
our of her conquests with no one, she owes nothing save 



ALEXANDER AND PHRINE 51 

to herself. Believe me, the rank of a pretty woman is 
no mean one. 

Alexander. So you seem to have thought. But do 
you think the role is really all that you made it ? 

Phrine. No. I will be perfectly frank with you. I 
exaggerated the role of a pretty woman, you strained 
over hard against yours. We both made too many con- 
quests. Had I had but two or three affairs of gallantry, 
it would have been all quite in order, there would have 
been nothing to complain of; but to have had enough 
such affairs to rebuild the Theban wall was excessive, 
wholly excessive. On the other hand, had you but con- 
quered Greece, and the neighbouring islands, and per- 
haps even part of lesser Asia, and made a kingdom of 
them, nothing would have been more intelligent nor in 
reason; but always to rush about without knowing 
whither, to take cities without knowing why, to act al- 
ways without any design, was a course that would not 
have pleased many right-minded people. 

Alexander. Let right-minded people say what they 
like. If I had used m}^ bravery and fortune as pru- 
dently as all that, I should scarcely ever be mentioned. 

Phrine. Nor I either, had I used my beauty so pru- 
dently. But if one wishes merely to make a commotion, 
one may be better equipped than by possessing a charac- 
ter full of reason. 



II 

DIDO AND STRATONICE 

Dido. Alas, my poor Stratonice, I am unhappy. 
You know what my life was. I maintained so precise 
a fidelity to my first husband, that I burned myself alive 
to escape accepting another. For all that I have not 
escaped evil rumour. It has pleased a poet, a certain 
Virgil, to transform so strict a prude as I was into a 
young flirt, charmed by a stranger's nice face the first 
day she sees him. My whole story turned upside down ! 
The funeral pyre is left me, I admit, but my reason is 
no more the fear of being forced into a second marriage ; 
I am supposed to be in despair lest the stranger abandon 
me. 

Stratonice. And the consequences might be most dan- 
gerous. Very few women will care to immolate them- 
selves for wifely fidelity, if a poet, after their deaths, 
is to be left free to say what he likes of them. But, per- 
haps, your Virgil was not so very far wrong; perhaps 
he has unravelled some intrigue of your life which you 
had hoped to keep hidden. Who knows? I should not 
care to take oath about your pyre. 

Dido. If there was the slightest likelihood in Virgil's 
suggestion, I should not mind being suspected; but he 
makes my lover ^neas, a man dead three centuries be- 
fore I came into the world. 

Stratonice. There is something in what you say. 
And yet you and iEneas seem to have been expressly 

52 



DIDO AND STRATONICE 53 

made for each other. You were both forced to leave 
your native countries; you sought your fortunes with 
strangers — he a widower, you a widow : all this is in har- 
mony. It is true you were born three hundred years 
after his death ; but Virgil saw so many good reasons for 
bringing you together that he has counted time for a 
trifle. 

Dido. Is that sensible? Good heavens, are not three 
hundred years always three hundred, can two people 
meet and fall in love, despite such an obstacle? 

Stratonice. Oh, Virgil was very clever in that. As- 
suredl}^ he was a man of the world, he wished to show 
that we must not judge other people's love affairs by 
appearance, and that those which show least are often 
the truest. 

Dido. I am not at all pleased that he should attack 
my reputation for the sake of this pretty fable. 

Stratonice. But he has not turned you into ridicule, 
has he ? He has not filled your mouth with silliness ? 

Dido. Not in the least. He has recited me his poem. 
The whole part that concerns me is divine, almost to 
the slander itself. In it I am beautiful, I say very fine 
things about my fictitious passion; and if Virgil had 
been obliged in the ^neid to show me as a respectable 
woman, the ^neid would be greatly impoverished. 

Stratonice. Well, then, what do you complain of? 
They ascribe to you a romance which does not belong 
to you : what a misfortune ! And in recompense they 
ascribe to you a beauty and wit which may not have been 
yours either. 

Dido. A fine consolation ! 

Stratonice. I am not sufficiently your intimate to be 
sure how you will feel this, but most women, I think, 
would rather that people spoke ill of their character 



54 FONTENELLE 

than of their wit or their beauty. Such was my tem- 
perament. A painter at the court of my husband, the 
Syrian king, was discontented with me, and to avenge 
himself he painted me in the arms of a soldier. He 
showed the picture and fled. My subjects, zealous for 
my glory, wished to burn the picture in public, but as 
I was painted admirably well and with a great deal of 
beauty — although the attitude was scarcely creditable 
to my virtue^ — I forbade them the burning; had the 
painter recalled, and pardoned him. If you will take 
my advice, you will do likewise with Virgil. 

Dido. That would be all very well if a woman's first 
merit were to be beautiful or to be full of wit. 

Stratonice. I cannot decide about this thing you call 
the first merit, but in ordinary life the first question 
about a woman one does not know is: Is she pretty? 
The second: Is she intelligent? People very rarely ask 
a third question. 



Ill 

ANACREON AND ARISTOTLE 

Aristotle. I should never have thought that a maker 
of ditties would have dared compare himself to a phi- 
losopher, to one with so great a reputation as mine. 

Anacreon. You did very well for the name of phi- 
losopher, yet I, with my ' ' ditties, ' ' did not escape being 
called the wise Anacreon; and I think the title ''phi- 
losopher" scarcely worth that of ''the wise." 

Aristotle. Those who gave you that title took no great 
care what they said. What had you done, at any time, 
to deserve it? 

Anacreon. I had done nothing but drink, sing, and 
wax amorous; and the wonder is that people called me 
"the wise" at this price, while they have called you 
merely ' ' philosopher ' ' and even this has cost you infinite 
trouble: for how many nights have you passed picking 
over the thorny questions of dialectic? How many 
plump books have you written on obscure matters, which 
perhaps even you yourself do not understand very well ? 

Aristotle. I confess that you have taken an easier 
road to wisdom, and you must have been very clever to 
get more glory with a lute and a bottle than the greatest 
of men have achieved with vigils and labour. 

Anacreon. You pretend to laugh at it, but I main- 
tain that it is more difficult to drink and to sing as I 
have, than to philosophize as you have philosophized. 
To sing and to drink, as I did, required that one should 

55 



56 FONTENELLE 

have disentangled one's soul from violent passions; that 
we should not aspire to things not dependent upon us, 
that we be ready always to take time as we find it. In 
short, to begin with, one must arrange a number of little 
affairs in oneself ; and although this needs small dialectic, 
it is, for all that, not so very easy to manage. But one 
may at smaller expense philosophize as you have phi- 
losophized. One need not cure oneself of either ambi- 
tion or avarice; one has an agreeable welcome at the 
court of Alexander the Great; one draws half a million 
crowns' worth of presents, and they are not all used in 
physical experiments though such was the donor's in- 
tention, in a word, this sort of philosophy drags in 
things rather opposed to philosophy. 

Aristotle. You have heard much scandal about me 
down here, but, after all, man is man solely on account 
of his reason, and nothing is finer than to teach men 
how they ought to use it in studying nature and in un- 
veiling all these enigmas which she sets before us. 

Anacreon. That is how men destroy custom in all 
things! Philosophy is, in itself, an admirable thing, 
and might be very useful to men, but because she would 
incommode them if they employed her in daily affairs, 
or if she dwelt near them and kept some rein on their 
passions, they have sent her to heaven to look after the 
planets and put a span on their movements; or if men 
walk out with her upon earth it is to have her scrutinize 
all that they see there; they always keep her busy as 
far as may be from themselves. However, as they wish 
to be philosophers cheaply they have stretched the sense 
of the term, and they give it now for the most part 
to such as seek natural causes. 

Aristotle. What more fitting name could one give 
them. 



ANACREON AND ARISTOTLE 57 

Anacreon. A philosopher is concerned only with men 
and by no means with the rest of the universe. An 
astronomer considers the stars, a physicist nature, a 
philosopher considers himself. But who would choose 
this last role on so hard a condition ? Alas, hardly any 
one. So we do not insist on philosophers being phi- 
losophers, we are content to find them physicists or 
astronomers. For myself, I was by no means inclined 
to speculation, but I am sure that there is less phi- 
losophy in a great many books which pretend to treat 
of it, than in some of these little songs which you so 
greatly despise, in this one, for example : 

Would gold prolong my life 
I'd have no other care 
Than gathering gold, 
And when death came 
I'd pay the same 
To rid me of his presence, 
« But since harsh fate 
Permits not this 
And gold is no more needful, 
Love and good cheer 
Shall share my care — 
Ah — ah — ah — ah — 
Shall share 
My care. 

Aristotle. If you wish to limit philosophy to the 
questions of ethics you will find things in my moral 
works worth quite as much as j^our verses : the obscurity 
for which I am blamed, and which is present perhaps 
in certain parts of my work, is not to be found in what 
I have said on this subject, and every one has admitted 



58 FONTENELLE 

that there is nothing in them more clear or more beau- 
tiful than what I have said of the passions. 

Anacreon. What an error ! It is not a matter of de- 
fining the passions by rule, as I hear you have done, but 
of keeping them under. Men give philosophy their trou- 
bles to contemplate not to cure, and they have found a 
method of morals which touches them almost as little as 
does astronomy. Can one hold in one's laughter at the 
sight of people who preach the contempt of riches, for 
money; and of chicken-hearted wastrels brought even to 
fisticuffs over a definition of the magnanimous ? 



IV 
HOMER AND ^SOP 

Homer. These fables which you have just told me 
cannot be too greatly admired. You must have needed 
great art to disguise the most important moral instruc- 
tion in little stories like these, and to hide your thoughts 
in metaphor so precise and familiar. 

jEsop. It is very pleasant to be praised for such art 
by you who understood it so deeply. 

Homer. Me ? I never attempted it. 

JEsop. What, did you not intend to conceal profound 
arcana in your great poems? 

Homer. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me. 

JEsop. But in my time all the connoisseurs said so; 
there was nothing in the Iliad or in the Odyssey to which 
they did not give the prettiest allegorical meanings. 
They claimed that all the secrets of theology and of 
physics, of ethics, and even of mathematics were wound 
into what you had written. Assuredly there was diffi- 
culty in getting them unwrapped: where one found a 
moral sense, another hit on a physical, but in the end 
they agreed that you had known everything and that 
you had said everything, if only one could well under- 
stand it. 

Homer. Lying aside, I suspected that people would 
be found to understand subtleties where I had intended 
none. There is nothing like prophesying far distant mat- 
ters and waiting the event, or like telling fables and 
awaiting the allegory. 

59 



60 FONTENELLE 

J^sop. You must have been very daring to leave your 
readers to put the allegories into your poems ! Where 
would you have been had they taken them in a flat 
literal sense? 

Homer. If they had ! It would have incommoded me 
a little. 

J^sop. What! The gods mangling each other, thun- 
dering Zeus in an assembly of divinities threatens Hera, 
the august, with a pummelling; Mars, wounded by Dio- 
med, howls, as you say, like nine or ten thousand men, 
and acts like none (for instead of tearing the Greeks 
asunder, he amuses himself complaining to Zeus of his 
wound), would all this have been good without allegory? 

Homer. Why not? You think the human mind 
seeks only the truth: undeceive yourself. Human in- 
telligence has great sympathy with the false. If you 
intend telling the truth, you do excellently well to veil 
it in fables, you render it far more bearable. If you 
wish to tell fables they will please well enough without 
containing any truth whatsoever. Truth must borrow 
the face of falsehood to win good reception in the mind, 
but the false goes in quite well with its own face, for it 
so enters its birthplace and its habitual dwelling, the 
truth comes there as a stranger. I will tell you much 
more : if I had killed myself imagining allegorical fables, 
it might well have happened that most folk would have 
found the fables too probable, and so dispensed with the 
allegory ; as a matter of fact, and one which you ought 
to know, my gods, such as they are, without mysteries, 
have not been considered ridiculous, 

JEsop. You shake me, I am terribly afraid that peo- 
ple will believe that beasts really talked as they do in 
my fables. 



HOMER AND ^SOP 61 

Homer. A not disagreeable fear ! 

Msop. What! if people believe that the gods held 
such conversations as you have ascribed to them, why 
shouldn't they believe that animals talked as I make 
them ? 

Homer. That is different. Men would like to think 
the gods as foolish as themselves, but never the beasts 
as wise. 



SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE 

Montaigne. Is it really you, divine Socrates? How 
glad I am of this meeting! I am quite newly come to 
this country, and I have been seeking you ever since my 
arrival. Finally, after having filled my book with your 
name and your praises, I can talk with you, and learn 
how you possessed that so 7iaive ^ virtue, whereof the 
allures ^ were so natural, and which was without parallel 
in even your happy age. 

Socrates. 1 am very glad to see a ghost who appears 
to have been a philosopher; but since you are newly de- 
scended, and seeing that it is a long time since I have 
met any one here (for they leave me pretty much alone, 
and there is no great crowding to investigate my con- 
versation), let me ask you for news. How goes the 
world? Has it not altered? 

Montaigne. Immensely. You would not know it. 

Socrates. I am delighted. I always suspected that 
it would have to become better and wiser than I had 
found it in my time. 

Montaigne. What do you mean? It is madder and 
more corrupt than ever before. That is the change I 
was wishing to speak of, and I expected you to tell me 
of an age as you had seen it, an age ruled by justice and 
probity. 

Socrates. And I on the other hand was expecting to 

1 Termes de Montaigne. 
62 



SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE 63 

learn the marvels of the age wherein you have but ceased 
to exist. But, men at present, do you say, have not 
corrected their classic follies? 

Montaigne. I think it is because you yourself are a 
classic that you speak so disrespectfully of antiquity; 
but you must know that our habits are lamentable, 
thing's deteriorate day in and day out. 

Socrates. Is it possible ? It seemed to me in my time 
that things were already in a very bad way. I thought 
they must ultimately work into a more reasonable course, 
and that mankind would profit by so many years of ex- 
periment. 

Montaigne. Do men ever experiment? They are like 
birds, caught always in the very same snares wherein 
have been taken a hundred thousand more of their spe- 
cies. There is no one who does not enter life wholly 
new, the stupidities of the fathers are not the least use 
to their children. 

Socrates. What ! no experiments ? I thought the 
world might have an old age less foolish and unruled 
than its youth. 

Montaigne. Men of all time are moved by the same 
inclinations, over which reason is powerless. Where 
there are men there are follies, the same ones. 

Socrates. In that case why do you think that an- 
tiquity was better than to-day ? 

Montaigne. Ah, Socrates, I knew you had a peculiar 
manner of reasoning and of catching your collocutors 
in arguments whereof they had not foreseen the conclu- 
sions, and that you led them whither you would, and that 
you called yourself the midwife of their thoughts con- 
ducting accouchement. I confess that I am brought to 
bed of a proposition contrary to what I proposed, but 
still I will not give in. Certain it is that we no longer 



64 FONTENELLE 

find the firm and vigorous souls of antiquity, of Aris- 
tides, of Phocion, of Pericles, or, indeed, of Socrates. 

Socrates. Why not? Is nature exhausted that she 
should have no longer the power of producing great 
souls? And why should she be exhausted of nothing 
save reasonable men? Not one of her works has de- 
generated; why should there be nothing save mankind 
which degenerates? 

Montaigne. It's flat fact: man degenerates. It seems 
that in old time nature showed us certain great patterns 
of men in order to persuade us that she could have made 
more had she wished, and that she had been negligent 
making the rest. 

Socrates. Be on your guard in one thing. Antiquity 
is very peculiar, it is the sole thing of its species: dis- 
tance enlarges it. Had you known Aristides, Phocion, 
Pericles and me, since you wish to add me to the num- 
ber, you would have found men of your time to resemble 
us. We are predisposed to antiquity because we dis- 
like our own age, thus antiquity profits. Man elevates 
the men of old time in order to abase his contemporaries. 
When we lived we overestimated our forebears, and now 
our posterity esteems us more than our due, and quite 
rightly. I think the world would be very tedious if one 
saw it with perfect precision, for it is always the same. 

Montaigne. I should have thought that it was all in 
movement, that ever3^thing changed; that different ages 
had different characteristics, like men. Surely one sees 
learned ages, and ignorant, simple ages and ages greatly 
refined? One sees ages serious, and trifling ages, ages 
polite, ages boorish ? 

Socrates. True. 

Montaigne. Why then are not some ages more vir- 
tuous, others more evil? 



SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE 65 

Socrates. That does not follow. Clothes change, but 
that does not mean a change in the shape of the body. 
Politeness or grossness, knowledge or ignorance, a higher 
or lower degree of simplicity, a spirit serious or of 
roguery, these are but the outside of a man, all this 
changes, but the heart does not change, and man is all 
in the heart. One is ignorant in one age, but a fashion 
of knowledge may come, one is anxious for one's own 
advantage but a fashion for being unselfish will not 
come to replace this. Out of the prodigious number of 
unreasonable men born in each era, nature makes two or 
three dozen with reason, she must scatter them wide over 
the earth, and you can well guess that there are never 
enough of them found in one spot to set up a fashion ©f 
virtue and rightness. 

Montaigne. But is this scattering evenly done? 
Some ages might fare better than others. 

Socrates. At most an imperceptible inequality. The 
general order of nature would seem to be rather con- 
stant. 



VI 
CHARLES V AND ERASMUS 

Erasmus. Be in no uncertainty, if there are ranks 
among the dead, I shall not cede you precedence. 

Charles. A grammarian ! A mere savant, or to push 
your claims to extremes, a man of wit, who would carry 
it off over a prince who has been master of the best half 
of Europe ! 

Erasmus. Add also America, and I am not the least 
more alarmed. Your greatness was a mere conglomera- 
tion of chances, as one, who should sort out all its parts, 
would make you see clearly. If your grandfather Ferdi- 
nand had been a man of his word, you would have had 
next to nothing in Italy ; if other princes had had sense 
enough to believe in antipodes, Columbus would not have 
come to him, and America would not have been beneath 
your dominion; if, after the death of the last Duke of 
Burgundy, Louis XI had well considered his actions, 
the heiress of Burgundy would not have married Maxi- 
milian, or the Low Countries descended to you ; if Henry 
of Castile, the brother of your grandmother Isabel, had 
not had a bad name among women, or if his wife had 
been of an unsuspectable virtue, Henry's daughter 
would have passed for his daughter and the kingdom of 
Castile have escaped you. 

Charles. You alarm me. At this late hour I am to 
lose Castile, or the Low Lands, or America, or Italy, one 
or the other. 

66 



CHARLES V AND ERASMUS 67 

Erasmus. You need not laugh. There could not 
have been a little good sense in one place, or a little 
good faith in another without its costing you dearly. 
There was nothing — to your great-uncle's impotence; 
to the inconstancy of your great-aunt — that you could 
have done without. How delicate is that edifice whose 
foundation is such a collection of hazards. 

Charles. There is no way of bearing so strict an ex- 
amination as yours. I confess that you sweep away all 
my greatness and all my titles. 

Erasmus. They were the adornments whereof you 
boasted, and I have swept them away without trouble. 
Do you remember having heard said that the Athenian 
Cimon, having taken prisoner a great number of Per- 
sians, put up their clothing and their naked bodies for 
sale, and since the clothes were greatly magnificent there 
was great concourse to buy them, but no one would bid 
for the men? Faith, I think what befell the Persians 
would happen to a good number of others if one de- 
tached their personal merit from that which fortune 
has given them. 

Charles. What is personal merit ? 

Erasmus. Need one ask that? Everything that is in 
us, our mind, for example, our knowledge. 

Charles. And can one reasonably boast of these 
things ? 

Erasmus. Certainly. These are not gifts of chance 
like high birth and riches. 

Charles. You surprise me. Does not knowledge come 
to the savant as wealth comes to most who have 
it ? Is it not by way of inheritance ? You receive from 
the ancients, as we receive from our fathers. If we have 
been left all we possess, you have been left all that you 
know, and on this account many scholars regard what 



68 FONTENELLE 

they have from the ancients with such respect as certain 
men show their ancestral lands and houses, wherein they 
would hate to have anything changed. 

Erasmus. The great are born heirs of their father's 
greatness, but the learned are not born inheritors of 
the ancient learning. Knowledge is not an entail re- 
ceived, it is an wholly new acquisition made by personal 
effort, or if it is an entail it is so difficult to receive as 
to be worthy of honour. 

Charles. Very well. Set the trouble of acquiring 
mental possessions against that of preserving the goods 
of fortune, the two things are quite equal; for if diffi- 
culty is all that you prize, there is as much in worldly 
affairs as in the philosopher 's study. 

Erasmus. Then set knowledge aside and confine our- 
selves to the mind, that at least does not depend upon 
fortune. 

Charles. Does not depend? The mind consists of a 
certain formation of cerebrum, is there less luck in being 
born with a respectable cerebrum than being born son 
to a king? You were a man of great genius; but ask 
all the philosophers why you weren't stupid and log- 
headed ; it depended on next to nothing, on a mere dis- 
position of fibres so fine that the most delicate operation 
of anatomy cannot find it. And after knowing all this, 
the fine wits still dare to tell us that they alone are free 
from the dominion of chance, and think themselves at 
liberty to despise the rest of mankind. 

Erasmus. You argue that it is as creditable to be rich 
as to show fine intelligence. 

Charles. To have fine intelligence is merely a luckier 
chance, but chance it all is at the bottom. 

Erasmus. You mean that all is chance? 

Charles. Yes, provided we give that name to an order 



CHARLES V AND ERASMUS 69 

we do not understand. I leave you to decide whether 
I have not plucked men cleaner than you have; you 
merely strip from them certain advantages of birth, I 
take even those of their understanding. If before being 
vain of a thing they should try to assure themselves that 
it really belonged to them, there would be little vanity 
left in the world. 



VII 
AGNES SOREL— ROXELANE 

Agnes. To tell you the truth, I don't understand 
your Turkish gallantry. The beauties of the seraglio 
have a lover who has only to say : I want it. They never 
enjoy the pleasures of resistance, and they cannot pro- 
vide the pleasures of victory, all the delights of love 
are thus lost to sultans and sultanas. 

Roxelane. How would you arrange it? The Turk- 
ish emperors being extremely jealous of their authority 
have set aside these refinements of dalliance. They are 
afraid that pretty women, not wholly dependent upon 
them, would usurp too great a sway over their minds, 
and meddle too greatly in public affairs. 

Agnes. Very well ! How do they know whether that 
would be a misfortune? Love has a number of uses, 
and I who speak to you, had I not been mistress to a 
French King, and if I had not had great power over him, 
I do not know where France would be at this hour. 
Have you heard tell how desperate were our affairs 
under Charles VII; to what state the kingdom was re- 
duced, with the English masters of nearly the whole of 
it? 

Roxelane. Yes, as the affair made a great stir, I know 
that a certain virgin saved France. And you were then 
this girl. La Pucelle? But how in that case were you 
at the same time the king 's mistress ? 

70 



AGNES SOREL— ROXELANE 71 

Agnes. You are wrong. I have nothing in common 
with the virgin of whom you speak. The king by whom 
I was loved wished to abandon his kingdom to foreign 
usurpers, he went to hide in a mountainous region, where 
it would have been by no means too comfortable for me 
to have followed him. I contrived to upset this plan. 
I called an astrologer with whom I had a private agree- 
ment, and after he had pretended to scan my nativity, 
he told me one day in Charles's presence that if all the 
stars were not liars I should be a king's mistress, and 
loved with a long-lasting passion. I said at once: 
"You will not mind, Sire, if I leave for the English 
Court, for you do not wish to be king, and have not yet 
loved me long enough for my destiny to be fulfilled." 
The fear which he had of losing me made him resolve 
to be king, and he began from that time to strengthen 
his kingdom. You see what France owes to love, and 
how gallant she should be, if only from recognition. 

Roxelane. It is true, but returning to La Pucelle. 
What was her part? Was history wrong in attributing 
to a young peasant girl what truly belonged to a court 
lady and a king's mistress? 

Agnes. Were history wrong on this point, it were 
no great wonder. However, it is true that La Pucelle 
greatly stirred up the soldiers, but I before that had 
animated the king. She was a great aid to this mon- 
arch, whom she found armed against the English, but 
without me she would not have found him so armed. 
And you will no longer doubt my part in this great af- 
fair when you hear the witness which one of Charles 
VII 's successors has borne to me in this quatrain : 

"Agnes Sorel, more honour have you won in the 
good cause, our France, her restoration, than e'er 



72 FONTENELLE 

was got by prayer and close cloistration of pious 
eremite or devout nun. " ^ 

What do you say to it, Roxelane? Will you confess 
that if I had been a sultana like you, and had I not 
had the right to threaten Charles VII as I did, he would 
have lost his all ? 

Roxelane. I am surprised that you should be so vain 
of so slight an action. You had no difficulty in gaining 
great power over the mind of your lover, you who were 
free and mistress of yourself, but I, slave as I was, sub- 
jugated the sultan. You made Charles VII king, al- 
most in spite of himself, but I made Soliman my hus- 
band despite his position. 

Agnes. What ! They say the sultans never marry. 

Roxelane. 1 agree, and still I made up my mind to 
marry Soliman, although I could not lead him into mar- 
riage by the hope of anything he did not already possess. 
You shall hear a finer scheme than your own. I began 
to build temples, and to do many deeds of piety. Then 
I appeared very sorrowful. The sultan asked me the 
reason over and over again, and after the necessary pre- 
liminaries and crochets, I told him that I was melan- 
choly because my good deeds, as I heard from our learned 
men, would bring me no reward, seeing that I was merely 
a slave, and worked only for Soliman, my master. Soli- 
man thereupon freed me, in order that I might reap 
the reward of my virtuous actions, then when he wished 
to cohabit with me and to treat me like a bride of the 
harem, I appeared greatly surprised. I told him with 
great gravity that he had no rights over the body of a 
free woman. Soliman had a delicate conscience : he went 
to consult a doctor of laws with whom I had a certain 

1 Francois Premier. 



AGNES SOREL— EOXELANE 73 

agreement. His reply was that the sultan should ab- 
stain, as I was no longer his slave, and that unless he 
espoused me, he could not rightly take me for his. He 
fell deeper in love than ever. He had only one course 
to follow, but it was a verj^ extraordinary course, and 
even dangerous, because of its novelty ; however, he took 
it and married me. 

Agnes. I confess that it is fine to subject those who 
stand so on their guard 'gainst our empery. 

Boxelane. Men strive in vain, when we lay hold of 
them by their passions we lead them whither we will. 
If they would let me live again, and give me the most 
imperious man in the world, I would make of him what- 
ever I chose, provided only that I had of wit much, of 
beauty sufficient, and of love only a little. 



VIII 
BRUTUS AND FAUSTINA 

Brutus. What! Is it possible that you took pleas- 
ure in your thousand infidelities to the Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius, the most affable husband, and without doubt 
the best man in Roman dominions? 

Faustina. And is it possible that you assassinated 
Julius Caesar, that so mild and moderate emperor ? 

Brutus. 1 wished to terrify all usurpers by the ex- 
ample of Ciesar, whose very mildness and moderation 
were no guarantee of security. 

Faustina. And if I should tell you that I wished to 
terrify likewise all husbands, so that no man should dare 
to be a husband after the example I made of Aurelius, 
whose indulgence was so ill requited? 

Brutus. A fine scheme! We must, however, have 
husbands or who would govern the women ? But Rome 
had no need to be governed by Caesar. 

Faustina. Who told you that? Rome had begun to 
have madcap crochets as humorous and fantastical as 
those which are laid to most women's credit, she could 
no longer dispense with a master, and yet she was ill- 
pleased to find one. Women are of the identical char- 
acter, and we may equally agree that men are too jeal- 
ous of their domination, they exercise it in marriage 
and that is a great beginning, but they wish to extend 
it to love. When they ask that a mistress be faithful, 
by faithful they mean submissive. The rule should be 

74 



BRUTUS AND FAUSTINA 75 

equally shared between lover and mistress, however it 
always shifts to one side or the other, almost always to 
that of the lover. 

Brutus. You are in a strange revolt against men. 

Faustina. I am a Roman, and I have a Roman feel- 
ing for liberty. 

Brutus. The world is quite full of such Romans, but 
Romans of my type are, you will confess, much more 
rare. 

Faustina. It is a very good thing that they are. I 
do not think that any honest man would behave as you 
did, or assassinate his benefactor. 

Brutus. I think there are equally few honest women 
who would have copied your conduct, as for mine, you 
must admit it showed firmness. It needed a deal of 
courage not to be affected by Cassar's feeling of friend- 
ship. 

Faustina. Do you think it needed less vigour to hold 
out against the gentleness and patience of Marcus Aure- 
lius ? He looked on all my infidelities with indifference ; 
he would not do me honour by jealousy, he took away 
from me the joys of deceiving him. I was so greatly en- 
raged at it, that I sometimes wished to turn pious. How- 
ever, I did not sink to that weakness, and after my death 
even, did not Marcus Aurelius do me the despite of 
building me temples, of giving me priests, and of setting 
up in my honour what is called the Faustinian festival? 
"Would it not drive one to fury? To have given me a 
gorgeous apotheosis! — to have exalted me as a goddess! 

Brutus. I confess I no longer understand women. 
These are the oddest complaints in the w^orld. 

Faustina. Would you not rather have plotted against 
Sylla than Caesar? Sylla would have stirred your in- 
dignation and hate by his excess of cruelty. I should 



76 FONTENELLE 

greatly have preferred to hoodwink a jealous man, even 
Caesar, for example, of whom we are speaking. He had 
insupportable vanity, he wished to have the empire of 
the world all to himself, and his wife all to himself, and 
because he saw Clodius sharing one and Pompey the 
other, he could bear neither Pompey nor Clodius. I 
should have been happy with C^sar ! 

Brutus. One moment and you wish to do away with 
all husbands, in the next you sigh for the worst. 

Faustina. I could wish there were none in order that 
women might ever be free, but if there are to be hus- 
bands, the most crabbed would please me most, for the 
sheer pleasure of gaining my liberty. 

Brutus. I think for women of your temperament it 
is much better that there should be husbands. The more 
keen the desire for liberty, the more malignity there is 
in it. 



IX 

HELEN AND PULVIA 

Helen. I must hear your side of a story which Au- 
gustus told me a little while ago. Is it true, Fulvia, 
that you looked on him with some favour, but that, when 
he did not respond, you stirred up your husband, Mark 
Antony, to make war upon him ? 

Fulvia. Very true, my dear Helen, and now that we 
are all ghosts there can be no harm in confessing it. 
Mark Antony was daft over the comedienne Citherida, 
I would have been glad to avenge myself by a love affair 
with Augustus ; but Augustus was fussy about his mis- 
tresses, he found me neither young enough nor suffi- 
ciently pretty, and though I showed him quite clearly 
that he was undertaking a civil war through default of 
a few attentions to me, it was impossible to make him 
agreeable. I will even recite to you, if you like, some 
verses which he made of the matter, although they are 
not the least complimentary: 

Because Mark Antony is charmed with the Glaphira, 

[It was by that name that he called Citherida.] 
Fulvia wants to break me ivith her eyes, 
Her Antony is faithless, what? Who cries: 
Aiigustus pays Mark's debts, or he must fear her. 
Must I, Augustus, come when Fidvia calls 
Merely because she wants me? 
At that rate, I'd have on my back 

77 



78 FONTENELLE 

A thousand wives unsatisfied. 

Love me, she says, or fight. The fates declare: 

She is too ugly. Let the trumpets hlare. 

Helen. You and I, then, between us have caused the 
two greatest wars on record? 

Fulvia. With this difference : you caused the Trojan 
War by your beauty, I that of Antony and Augustus 
by the defect of that quality. 

Helen. But still you have an advantage, your war 
was much more enjoyable. My husband avenged him- 
self for an insult done him by loving me, which is quite 
common, yours avenged himself because a certain man 
had not loved you, and this is not ordinary at all. 

Fulvia. Yes, but Antony didn't know that he was 
making his war on my account, while Menelaus knew 
quite well that his was on your account. That is what 
no one can pardon him. For Menelaus with all the 
Greeks behind him besieged Troy for ten years to tear 
you from Paris ' arms yet if Paris had insisted on giving 
you up, would not Menelaus, instead of all this, have 
had to stand ten years siege in Sparta to keep from 
taking you back? Frankly I think your Trojans and 
Greeks deficient in humour, half of them silly to want 
you returned, the other half still more silly to keep you. 
Why should so many honest folk be immolated to the 
pleasures of one young man who was ignorant of what 
he was doing? I cannot help smiling at that passage 
in Homer where after nine years of war wherein one 
had just lost so many people, he assembles a council 
before Priam's palace. Antenor thinks they should sur- 
render you, I should have thought there was scant cause 
for hesitation, save that one might have regretted not 
having thought of this expedient long before. How- 



HELEN AND FULVIA 79 

ever Paris bears witness that he mislikes the proposal, 
and Priam, who was, as Homer tells us, peer to the gods 
in wisdom, being embarrassed to see his Cabinet divided 
on such a delicate matter, not knowing which side to 
choose, orders every one to go home to supper. 

Helen. The Trojan War has at least this in its fa- 
vour, its ridiculous features are quite apparent, but the 
war between Augustus and Antony did not show its 
reality. When one saw so great a number of Imperial 
eagles surging about the land, no one thought of sup- 
posing that the cause of their mutual animosity was 
Augustus' refusal to you of his favours. 

Fulvia. So it goes, we see men in great commotions, 
but the sources and springs are for the most part quite 
trivial and ridiculous. It is important for the glory of 
great events that their true causes be hidden. 



X 

SENECA AND SCARRON 

Seneca. You fill full my cup of joy, telling me that 
the stoics endure to this day and that in these latter ages 
you professedly held their doctrine. 

Scarron. I was, without vanity, more of a stoic than 
you were, or than was Chrysippus, or Zeno, your founder. 
You were all in a position to philosophize at your ease. 
You yourself had immense possessions. The rest were 
either men of property or endowed with excellent health, 
or at least they had all their limbs. They came and went 
in the ordinary manner of men. But I was the shuttle 
of ill-fortune ; misshapen, in a form scarcely human, im- 
mobile, bound to one spot like a tree, I suffered contin- 
ually, and I showed that these evils are limited by the 
body but can never reach the soul of a sage. Grief 
suffered always the shame of not being able to enter my 
house save by a restricted number of doors. 

Seneca. I am delighted to hear you speak thus. By 
your words alone I recognize you for a great stoic. 
Were you not your age 's admiration ? 

Scarron. I was. I was not content to suffer m}^ pangs 
with patience, I insulted them by my mockery. Steadi- 
ness would have honoured another, but I attained gaiety. 

Seneca. stoic wisdom ! You are, then, no chimera, 
as is the common opinion! You are, in truth, among 
men, and here is a wise man whom you have made no less 
happy than Zeus. Come, sir, I must lead you to Zeno 

80 



SENECA AND SCARRON 81 

and the rest of our stoics; I want them to see the fruit 
of their admirable lessons to mankind. 

Scarrofi. You will greatly oblige me by introducing 
me to such illustrious shades. 

Seneca. By what name must they know you? 

8carro7i. Scarron is the name. 

Seneca. Scarron ? The name is known to me. Have 
I not heard several moderns, who are here, speak of 
you? 

Scarro7i. Possibly. 

Seneca. Did you not write a great mass of humorous 
and ridiculous verses? 

Scarron. Yes. I even invented a sort of poetry 
which they call the burlesque. It goes the limit in mer- 
riment. 

Seneca. But you were not then a philosopher? 

Scarron. Why not? 

Seneca. It is not a stoic's business to write ludicrous 
books and to try to be mirth-provoking. 

Scarron. Oh ! I see that you do not understand the 
perfections of humour. All wisdom is in it. One can 
draw ridicule out of anything; I could even get it out 
of your books, if I wished to, and without any trouble 
at all: yet all things will not give birth to the serious, 
and I defy you to put my works to any purpose save 
that for which they were made. Would not this tend 
to show that mirth rules over all things, and that the 
world's affairs are not made for serious treatment? I 
have turned your Virgil's sacred ^neid into burlesque, 
and there is no better way to show that the magnificent 
and the ludicrous are near neighbours, with hardly a 
fence between them. All things are like these tours de 
force of perspective where a number of separate faces 
make, for example, an emperor if viewed from a par- 



82 FONTENELLE 

ticular angle; change the view-point and the figure 
formed is a scoundrel's. 

Seneca. I am sorry that people did not understand 
that your frivolous verses were made to induce such pro- 
found reflections. Men would have respected you more 
than they did had they known you for so great a phi- 
losopher; but it was impossible to guess this from the 
plays you gave to the public. 

Scarron. If I had written fat books to prove that 
poverty and sickness should have no effect on the gaiety 
of the sage, they would have been perhaps worthy of a 
stoic ? 

Seneca. Most assuredly. 

Scarron. And I wrote heaven knows how many books 
which prove that in spite of poverty, in spite of infirm- 
ity, I was possessed of this gaiety; is not this better? 
Your treatises upon morals are but speculations on wis- 
dom, my verses a continual practice. 

Seneca. Your pretended wisdom was not a result of 
your reason, but merely of temperament. 

Scarron. The best sort of wisdom in the world. 

Seneca. They are droll wiseacres indeed who are tem- 
peramentally wise. Is it the least to their credit that 
they are not stark raving ? The happiness of being vir- 
tuous may come sometimes from nature, but the merit 
of being wise can never come but from reason. 

Scarron. People scarcely pay any attention to what 
you call a merit, for if we see that some man has a virtue, 
and we can make out that it is not his by nature, we 
rate it at next to nothing. It would seem, however, that 
being acquired by so much trouble, we should the more 
esteem it: no matter, it is a mere result of the reason 
and inspires no confidence. 

Seneca. One should rely even less on the inequality 



SENECA AND SCARRON 83 

of temperament in your wise men, who are wise only 
as their blood pleases. One must know how the interiors 
of their bodies are disposed ere one can gauge the reach 
of their virtue. Is it not incomparably finer to be led 
only by reason; to make oneself independent of nature, 
so that one need fear no surprises ? 

Scarron. That were better if it were possible; but, 
unfortunately, Nature keeps perpetual guard on her 
rights. Her rights are initial movements, and no one 
can wrest them from her. Men are often well under 
way ere reason is warned or awakened, and when she is 
ready to act she finds things in great disorder, and it is, 
even then, doubtful if she can do aught to help matters. 
No, I am by no means surprised to see so many folk 
resting but incomplete faith upon reason. 

Seneca. Hers alone is the government of men and the 
ruling of all this universe. 

Scarron. Yet she seldom manages to maintain her 
authority. I have heard that some hundred years after 
your death a platonic philosopher asked the reigning 
emperor for a little town in Calabria. It was wholly 
ruined. He wished to rebuild it and to police it accord- 
ing to the rules of Plato's Republic, and to rename it 
Platonopolis. But the emperor refused the philosopher, 
having so little trust in divine Plato's reason that he 
was unwilling to risk to it the rule of a dump-heap. 
You see thereby how Reason has ruined her credit. If 
she were in any way estimable, men would be the only 
creatures who could esteem her, and men do not esteem 
her at all. 



XI 

STRATO, RAPHAEL OF URBINO 

Strato. I did not expect that the advice I gave to 
my slave would have such happy effects, yet in the world 
above it saved me my life and my kingdom altogether, 
and here it has won me the admiration of all the sages. 

Raphael. What advice did you give? 

Strato. I was at Tyre. All the slaves revolted and 
butchered their masters, yet one of mine was humane 
enough to spare me, and to hide me from the fury of 
the rest. They agreed to choose for their king the man 
who, upon a set day, should see the sun rise before any 
one else. They gathered in the plain, the whole multi- 
tude gluing their eyes to the eastern heaven, where the 
sun is wont to arise ; my slave alone, in accordance with 
my instructions, kept his eyes toward the west. You 
may well believe that the others thought him a fool. 
However, by turning his back on them he saw the first 
rays of the sun which caught on a lofty tower, while his 
fellows still sought the sun's body in the east. They 
admired the subtlety of his mind, but he confessed that 
it was my due and that I was still among the living. 
They elected me king as a man descended of gods. 

Raphael. I see that your advice was quite useful yet 
do not find it a subject for wonder. 

Strato. All our philosophers here will explain to you 
that I taught my slave that the wise should ever turn 
their backs on the mob, and that the general opinion is 
usually sound if you take it to mean its own opposite. 

84 



STRATO, RAPHAEL OF URBINO 85 

Raphael. These philosophers talk like philosophers. 
It is their business to scoff at common opinion and preju- 
dice ; yet there is nothing more convenient or useful than 
are these latter. 

Strato. From the manner in which you speak, one 
sees that you had no difficulty in complying with them. 

Raphael. I assure you that my defence of prejudice 
is disinterested, and that by taking prejudice's part I 
laid myself open to no small ridicule. They were search- 
ing the Roman ruins for statues and as I was a good 
sculptor and painter they chose me to judge which were 
antique. Michael Angelo, my competitor, made in se- 
cret a perfect statue of Bacchus. He broke off one of 
the fingers, then hid the statue in a place where he knew 
we would dig. I declared it antique when we found it. 
He said it was modern. I based my opinion chiefly on 
the beauty of the work which, according to our rules, 
was well worthy of Grecian carvers. Irritated at con- 
tradiction I carried the matter further, and said it had 
been done in the time of Polycletus or Phidias. Then 
Michael Angelo brought out the broken irrefutable finger. 
I was greatly mocked for my prejudice, but what would 
I have done without prejudice? I was judge, and as 
judge one must make decisions. 

Strato. You would have decided according to reason. 

Raphael. Does reason ever decide? I should never 
have known by any process of reason to what age the 
statue belonged, I should have seen only its excellent 
beauty, then prejudice came to my aid, saying that a 
beautiful statue was ancient, or should be. With such 
a decision I judged. 

Strato. It may well be that reason has no incon- 
testable formulae for things of such slight importance; 
but upon all questions of human conduct she has deci- 



86 FONTENELLE 

sions quite sure. Unfortunately men do not consult 
them. 

Eaphael. Let us then consult her on some point and 
see if she will decide it. Ask her if we should weep or 
laugh at the death of our friends and relations. On 
one side she will say, "they are lost to you, therefore 
weep." On the other, "they are delivered from the 
miseries of this life, you should therefore be joyful." 
In the face of such answers from reason, we act as local 
custom decrees. We weep at her bidding, and we weep 
so thoroughly that we cannot conceive laughter as pos- 
sible; or we laugh so thoroughly that tears seem out of 
the question. 

Strata. Reason is not always so undecided. She al- 
lows custom to decide such matters as are not worth 
her attention, but think how many very considerable 
things there are upon which she has clear-cut ideas, and 
from which she draws consequences equally clear. 

Raphael. Unless I am much mistaken there are very 
few of these clear ideas. 

Strata. No matter, they alone are worthy of absolute 
trust. 

Raphael. That cannot be, for reason offers us a very 
small number of set maxims, and our mind is so made 
as to believe in many more. The overplus of one's in- 
clination to believe in something or other all counts on 
the side of pr?;judi'*' \ false opinions fill up the void. 

Strato. B..t w '^ast oneself into error? 

Cannot one keep one's judgment suspended, in these 
unprovable matters ? Reason stops when she knows not 
which way to turn. 

Raphael. Very true, she has no other secret means 
of keeping herself from mistakes, save that of standing 
stock-still; but such a condition does violence to man's 



STRATO, RAPHAEL OF URBINO 87 

mind, the human mind is in movement, and it must con- 
tinue to move. It is not every man who can doubt; we 
have need of illumination to attain this faculty, we have 
need of strength to continue it. Moreover doubt is with- 
out action and among mankind we must act. 

Strata. Thus one should preserve the prejudices of 
custom in order to act like the next man, but destroy 
the habits of thought in order to think like the sage. 

Raphael. Better preserve them all. You seem to for- 
get the old Samnite's answer when his compatriots sent 
to ask him what should be done with the Roman army 
which they had caught in the Caudine forks. The old 
man replied that they should put them all to the sword. 
The Samnites thought this too cruel; he then said they 
should let them go free and unscathed, and in the end 
they did neither, and reaped the evil result. It is the 
same with prejudices, we must either keep the whole 
lot or crush them out altogether, otherwise those you 
have eliminated will make you mistrust those which re- 
main. The unhappiness of being deceived in many 
things will not be balanced by the pleasure of its being 
an unconscious deceit, and you will have neither the 
illumination of truth nor yet the comfort of error. 

Strato. If there were no means of escaping your 
alternative, one should not long hesitate about taking 
a side. We should root out all prejudice. 

Raphael. But reason would hunt out all our old 
notions and leave nothing else in tl[i(^^^^ 'j^ce. She would 
create a species of vacuum^ 9.Lifep'^}^^/>j'oula' one bear 
this? No, no, considering how slight an amount of rea- 
son inheres in all men, we must leave them the prejudices 
to which they are so well acclimatized. These preju- 
dices are reason's supplement. All that is lacking on 
one side can be got out of the other. 



XII 
BOMBASTES PARACELSUS AND MOLIERE' 

Moliere. I should be delighted with you, if only be- 
cause of your name, Paracelsus. One would have 
thought you some Greek or Roman, and never have sus- 
pected that Paracelsus was an Helvetian philosopher. 

Paracelsus. I have made my name as illustrious as it 
is lovely. My works are a great aid to those who would 
pierce nature's secrets and more especially to those who 
launch out into the knowledge of genii and elementals. 

Moliere. I can readily believe that such is the true 
realm of science. To know men, whom one sees every 
day, is nothing ; but to know the invisible genii is quite 
another ^Isiir. 

Paracelsus. Doubtless. I have given precise infor- 
mation as to their nature, employments, and inclinations, 
as to their different orders, and their potencies through- 
out the cosmos. 

Moliere. How happy you were to be possessed of this 
knowledge, for before this you must have known man so 
precisely, yet many men have not attained even this. 

Paracelsus. Oh, there is no philosopher so inconsid- 
erable as not to have done so. 

Moliere. I suppose so. And you yourself have no 
indecisions regarding the nature of the soul, or its func- 
tions, or the nature of its bonds with the body ? 

Paracelsus. Frankly, it's impossible that there should 
not always remain some uncertainties on these subjects, 

88 



BOMBASTES PARACELSUS AND MOLIERE 89 

but we know as mucli of them as philosophy is able to 
learn. 

Moliere. And you yourself know no more? 

Paracelsus. No. Isn 't that quite enough ? 

Moliere. Enough? It is nothing at all. You mean 
that you have leapt over men whom you do not under- 
stand, in order to come upon genii ? 

Paracelsus. Genii are much more stimulatory to our 
natural curiosity. 

Moliere. Yes, but it is unpardonable to speculate 
about them before one has completed one's knowledge 
of men. One would think the human mind wholly ex- 
hausted, when one sees men taking as objects of knowl- 
edge things which have perhaps no reality, and when 
one sees how gaily they do this. However, it is certain 
that there are enough very real objects to keep one 
wholly employed. 

Paracelsus. The human mind naturally neglects the 
sciences which are too simple, and runs after those more 
mysterious. It is only upon these last that it can ex- 
pend all its activity. 

Moliere. So much the worse for the mind ; what you 
say is not at all to its credit. The truth presents itself, 
but being too simple it passes unrecognized, and ridicu- 
lous mysteries are received only because of their mys- 
tery. I believe that if most men saw the universe as it 
is, seeing there neither ''virtues" nor "numbers," nor 
''properties" of the planets, nor fatalities tied to cer- 
tain times and revolutions, they could not help saying 
of its admirable arrangement: ''What, is that all there 
is to it?" 

Paracelsus. You call these mysteries ridiculous, be- 
cause you have not been able to reach into them, they 
are truly reserved for the great. 



90 FONTENELLE 

Moliere. I esteem those who do not understand these 
mysteries quite as much as those who do understand 
them; unfortunately nature has not made every one 
incapable of such understanding. 

Paracelsus. But you who seem so didactic, what pro- 
fession did you follow on earth ? 

Moliere. A profession quite different from yours. 
You studied the powers of genii, I studied the follies of 
men. 

Paracelsus. A fine subject. Do we not know well 
enough that men are subject to plenty of follies? 

Moliere. We know it in the gross, and confusedly; 
but we must come to details, and then we can under- 
stand the scope and extent of this science. 

Paracelsus. Well, what use did you make of it ? 

Moliere. I gathered in a particular place the greatest 
possible number of people and then showed them that 
they were all fools. 

Paracelsus. It must have needed a terrible speech to 
get that plain fact into their heads. 

Moliere. Nothing is easier. One proves them their 
silliness without using much eloquence, or much pre- 
meditated reasoning. Their acts are so ludicrous that 
if you but show like acts before them, you overwhelm 
them with their own laughter. 

Paracelsus. I understand you, you were a comedian. 
For myself I cannot conceive how one can get any pleas- 
ure from comedy; one goes to laugh at a representation 
of customs, why should one not laugh at the customs 
themselves ? 

Moliere. In order to laugh at the world's affairs one 
must in some fashion stand apart, or outside them. Com- 
edy takes you outside them, she shows them to you as a 
pageant in which you ;rourself haye no part. 



BOMBASTES PARACELSUS AND MOLIERE 91 

Paracelsus. But does not a man go straight back to 
that which he has so recently mocked, and take his 
wonted place in it? 

Moliere. No doubt. The other day, to amuse myself, 
I made a fable on this same subject. A young gosling 
flew with the usual clumsiness of his species, and during 
his momentary flight, which scarcely lifted him from the 
earth, he insulted the rest of the barnj^ard: "Unfor- 
tunate animals, I see you beneath me, you cannot thus 
cleave the gether." It was a very short mockery, the 
gosling fell with the words. 

Paracelsus. What use then are the reflections of com- 
edy, since they are like the flight of your gosling, and 
since one falls back at once into the communal silliness? 

Moliere. It is much to have laughed at oneself; na- 
ture has given us that marvellous faculty lest we make 
dupes of ourselves. How often, when half of our being 
is doing something with enthusiasm, does the other half 
stand aside laughing? And if need were we might find 
a third part to make mock of both of the others. You 
might say that man was made of inlays. 

Paracelsus. I cannot see that there is much in all 
this to occupy one's attention. A few banal reflections, 
a few jests of scanty foundation deserve but little esteem, 
but what efforts of meditation may we not need to treat 
of more lofty matters ? 

Moliere. You are coming back to your genii, I recog- 
nize only fools. However, although I have never worked 
upon subjects save those which lie before all men's eyes, 
I can predict that my comedies will outlast your exalted 
productions. Everything is subject to the changes of 
fashion, the labours of the mind are not exempt from this 
destiny of doublets and breeches. I have seen, lord 
knows how many, books and fashions of writing interred 



92 FONTENELLE 

with their authors, very much in the manner that certain 
races bury a man with his most valued belongings. I 
know perfectly well that there may be revolutions in the 
kingdom of letters, and, with all that, I guarantee that 
my writings Avill endure. And I know why, for he who 
would paint for immortality must paint fools. 

FONTENELLE 'S TRANSLATION FROM HADRIEN 

Ma petite ame, ma mignonne, 

Tu t'en vas done, ma fille, et Dieu scache ou tu vas; 

Tu pars seulette, nue, et tremblotante, Helas ! 

Que deviendra ton humeur folichone? 

Que deviendront tant de jolis ebats? 



DIVISIONS 



A RETROSPECT 

There has been so much scribbling about a new fash- 
ion in poetry, that I may perhaps be pardoned this brief 
recapitulation and retrospect. 

In the spring or early summer of 1912, "H. D.," Rich- 
ard Aldington and myself decided that we were agreed 
upon the three principles following: 

1. Direct treatment of the "thing" whether subjective 
or objective. 

2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute 
to the presentation. 

3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence 
of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. 

Upon many points of taste and of predilection we 
differed, but agreeing upon these three positions we 
thought we had as much right to a group name, at least 
as much right, as a number of French "schools" pro- 
claimed by Mr. Flint in the August number of Harold 
Munro's magazine for 1911. 

This school has since been "joined" or "followed" 
by numerous people who, whatever their merits, do not 
show any signs of agreeing with the second specification. 
Indeed vers libre has become as prolix and as verbose 
as any of the flaccid varieties that preceded it. It has 
brought faults of its own. The actual language and 
phrasing is often as bad as that of our elders without 
even the excuse that the words are shoveled in to fill a 
metric pattern or to complete the noise of a rhyme- 
sound. Whether or no the phrases followed by the fol- 

95 



96 DIVISIONS 

lowers are musical must be left to the reader's decision. 
At times I can find a marked metre in ' ' vers libres, ' ' as 
stale and hackneyed as any pseudo-Swinburnian, at times 
the writers seem to follow no musical structure what- 
ever. But it is, on the whole, good that the field should 
be ploughed. Perhaps a few good poems have come 
from the new method, and if so it is justified. 



Criticism is not a circumscription or a set of prohibi- 
tions. It provides fixed points of departure. It may 
startle a dull reader into alertness. That little of it 
which is good is mostly in stray phrases ; or if it be an 
older artist helping a younger it is in great measure 
but rules of thumb, cautions gained by experience. 

I set together a few phrases on practical working about 
the time the first remarks on imagisme were published. 
The first use of the word ''Imagiste" was in my note 
to T. E. Hulme's five poems, printed at the end of my 
"Ripostes" in the autumn of 1912. I reprint my cau- 
tions from Poetry for March, 1913. 

A FEW DON'TS 

An ''Image" is that which presents an intellectual 
and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the 
term ''complex" rather in the technical sense employed 
by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we 
might not agree absolutely in our application. 

It is the presentation of such a ' ' complex ' ' instantane- 
ously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that 
sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that 
sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the 
presence of the greatest works of art. 



A RETROSPECT 97 

It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than 
to produce voluminous works. 

All' this, however, some may consider open to debate. 
The immediate necessity is to tabulate a list of don'ts 
for those beginning to write verses. I can not put all 
of them into Mosaic negative. 

To begin with, consider the three propositions (de- 
manding direct treatment, economy of words, and the 
sequence of the musical phrase), not as dogma — never 
consider anything as dogma — but as the result of long 
contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's con- 
templation, may be worth consideration. 

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have 
never themselves written a notable work. Consider the 
discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek 
poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco- 
Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres. 

LANGUAGE 

Use no superfluous w^ord, no adjective, which does not 
reveal something. 

Don't use such an expression as ''dim lands of peace/' 
It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the 
concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that 
the natural object is always the adequate symbol. 

Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre 
verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't 
think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when 
you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably 
difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition 
into line lengths. 

What the expert is tired of today the public will be 
tired of tomorrow. 

Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler 



98 DIVISIONS 

than the art of music, or that you can please the expert 
before you have spent at least as much effort on the art 
of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art 
of music. 

Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, 
but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt 
outright, or to try to conceal it. 

Don't allow "influence" to mean merely that you 
mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some 
one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turk- 
ish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed 
babbling in his dispatches of ''dove-gray" hills, or else 
it was "pearl-pale," I can not remember. 

Use either no ornament or good ornament. 

RHYTHM AND RHYME 

Let the candidate fill his mind with the finest cadences 
he can discover, preferably in a foreign language ^ so 
that the meaning of the words may be less likely to divert 
his attention from the movement; e.g., Saxon charms, 
Hebridean Folk Songs, the verse of Dante, and the lyrics 
of Shakespeare — if he can dissociate the vocabulary from 
the cadence. Let him dissect the lyrics of Goethe coldly 
into their component sound values, syllables long and 
short, stressed and unstressed, into vowels and con- 
sonants. 

It is not necessary that a poem should rely on its 
music, but if it does rely on its music that music must be 
such as will delight the expert. 

Let the neophyte know assonance and alliteration, 
rhyme immediate and delayed, simple and polyphonic, 

1 This is for rhythm, his vocabulary must of course be found in 
his native tongue. 



A RETROSPECT 99 

as a musician would expect to know harmony and coun- 
terpoint and all the minutiae of his craft. No time is 
too great to give to these matters or to any one of them, 
even if the artist seldom have need of them. 

Don't imagine that a thing will "go" in verse just 
because it 's too dull to go in prose. 

Don 't be " viewy ' ' — leave that to the writers of pretty 
little philosophic essays. Don't be descriptive; remem- 
ber that the painter can describe a landscape much bet- 
ter than you can, and that he has to know a deal more 
about it. 

"When Shakespeare talks of the ' ' Dawn in russet man- 
tle clad" he presents something which the painter does 
not present. There is in this line of his nothing that 
one can call description; he presents. 

Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way 
of an advertising agent for a new soap. 

The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a 
great scientist until he has discovered something. He 
begins by learning what has been discovered already. 
He goes from that point onward. He does not bank 
on being a charming fellow personally. He does not 
expect his friends to applaud the results of his freshman 
class work. Freshmen in poetry are unfortunately not 
confined to a definite and recognizable class room. They 
are ''all over the shop." Is it any wonder ''the public 
is indifferent to poetry?" 

Don't chop your stuff into separate iambs. Don't 
make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin 
every next line with a heave. Let the beginning of the 
next line catch the rise of the rhythm wave, unless you 
want a definite longish pause. 

In short, behave as a musician, a good musician, when 



100 DIVISIONS 

dealing with that phase of your art which has exact 
parallels in music. The same laws govern, and you are 
bound by no others. 

Naturally, your rhythmic structure should not destroy 
the shape of your words, or their natural sound, or their 
meaning. It is improbable that, at the start, you will 
be able to get a rhythm-structure strong enough to affect 
them very much, though you may fall a victim to all 
sorts of false stopping due to line ends and cgesurae. 

The musician can rely on pitch and the volume of 
the orchestra. You can not. The term harmony is 
misapplied to poetry ; it refers to simultaneous sounds of 
different pitch. There is, however, in the best verse a 
sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the 
hearer and acts more or less as an organ-base. 

A rhyme must have in it some slight element of sur- 
prise if it is to give pleasure ; it need not be bizarre or 
curious, but it must be well used if used at all. 

Vide further Vildrac and Duhamel's notes on rhyme 
in ''Technique Poetique." 

That part of your poetry which strikes upon the im- 
aginative eye of the reader will lose nothing by trans- 
lation into a foreign tongue; that which appeals to the 
ear can reach only those who take it in the original. 

Consider the definiteness of Dante's presentation, as 
compared with Milton's rhetoric. Read as much of 
Wordsworth as does not seem too unutterably dull.^ 

If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, 
Catullus, Villon, Heine when he is in the vein, Gautier 
when he is not too frigid ; or, if you have not the tongues, 
seek out the leisurely Chaucer. Good prose will do you 
no harm, and there is good discipline to be had by try- 
ing to write it. 
1 Vide infra. 



A RETROSPECT" 101 

Tra islation is likewise good training, if you find that 
your ( riginal matter ' ' wobbles ' ' when you try to rewrite 
it. The meaning of the poem to be translated can not 
''wobble." 

If you are using a symmetrical form, don't put in 
what you want to say and then fill up the remaining 
vacuums with slush. 

Don't mess up the perception of one sense by trying 
to define it in terms of another. This is usually only the 
result of being too lazy to find the exact word. To this 
clause there are possibly exceptions. 

The first three simple proscriptions will throw out 
nine-tenths of all the bad poetry now accepted as stand- 
ard and classic; and will prevent you from many a 
crime of production. 

''. . . Mais d'abord il faut etre un poete/' as MM. 
Duhamel and Vildrac have said at the end of their little 
book, ''Notes sur la Technique Poetique." 



Since March, 1913, Ford Madox Hueffer has pointed 
out that Wordsworth was so intent on the ordinary or 
plain word that he never thought of hunting for le mot 
juste. 

John Butler Yeats has handled or man-handled "Words- 
worth and the Victorians, and his criticism, contained 
in letters to his son, is now printed and available. 

I do not like writing about art, my first, at least I 
think it was my first essay on the subject, was a protest 
against it. 

1 Page 000. 



102 DIVISIONS 

PROLEGOMENAi 

Time was when the poet lay in a green field with 
his head against a tree and played his diversion on a 
ha'penny whistle, and Caesar's predecessors conquered 
the earth, and the predecessors of golden Crassus em- 
bezzled, and fashions had their say, and let him alone. 
And presumably he was fairly content in this circum- 
stance, for I have small doubt that the occasional passer- 
by, being attracted by curiosity to know why any one 
should lie under a tree and blow diversion on a ha'penny 
whistle, came and conversed with him, and that among 
these passers-by there was on occasion a person of charm 
or a young lady who had not read ''Man and Super- 
man ' ' ; and looking back upon this naive state of affairs 
we call it the age of gold. 

Metastasio, and he should know if any one, assures 
us that this age endures — even though the modern poet 
is expected to holloa his verses down a speaking tube 
to the editors of cheap magazines — S. S. McClure, or 
some one of that sort — even though hordes of authors 
meet in dreariness and drink healths to the ' ' Copyright 
Bill ' ' ; even though these things be, the age of gold per- 
tains. Imperceivably, if you like, but pertains. You 
meet unkempt Amyclas in a Soho restaurant and chant 
together of dead and forgotten things — it is a manner 
of speech among poets to chant of dead, half-forgotten 
things, there seems no special harm in it; it has always 
been done — and it's rather better to be a clerk in the 
Post Office than to look after a lot of stinking, verminous 
sheep — and at another hour of the day one substitutes 
the drawing-room for the restaurant and tea is prob- 

1 Poetry and Drama ( then the Poetry Review, edited by Harold 
Monro), Feb., 1912. 



A RETROSPECT 103 

ably more palatable than mead and mare's milk, and 
little calves than honey. And in this fashion one sur- 
vives the resignation of Mr. Balfour, and the iniquities 
of the American customs-house, e quel hufera infernal, 
the periodical press. And then in the middle of it, there 
being apparently no other person at once capable and 
available one is stopped and asked to explain oneself. 

I begin on the chord thus querulous, for I would much 
rather lie on what is left of Catullus' parlour floor and 
speculate the azure beneath it and the hills off to Salo 
and Riva with their forgotten gods moving unhindered 
amongst them, than discuss any processes and theories 
of art whatsoever. I would rather play tennis. I shall 
not argue. 

CREDO 

Bhythm. — I believe in an ''absolute rhythm," a 
rhythm, that is, in poetry which corresponds exactly to 
the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed. A 
man's rhythm must be interpretative, it will be, there- 
fore, in the end, his own, uncounterfeiting, uncounter- 
feitable. 

Symbols. — I believe that the proper and perfect sym- 
bol is the natural object, that if a man use "symbols" 
he must so use them that their symbolic function does 
not obtrude ; so that a sense, and the poetic quality of the 
passage, is not lost to those who do not understand the 
symbol as such, to whom, for instance, a hawk is a hawk. 

Technique. — I believe in technique as the test of a 
man's sincerity; in law when it is ascertainable; in the 
trampling down of every convention that impedes or 
obscures the determination of the law, or the precise 
rendering of the impulse. 

Form. — I think there is a "fluid" as well as a "solid" 



104 DIVISIONS 

content, that some poems may have form as a tree has 
form, some as water poured into a vase. That most sym- 
metrical forms have certain uses. That a vast num- 
ber of subjects cannot be precisely, and therefore not 
properly rendered in symmetrical forms. 

''Thinking that alone worthy wherein the whole art 
is employed, " ^ I think the artist should master all 
known forms and systems of metric, and I have with 
some persistence set about doing this, searching par- 
ticularly into those periods wherein the systems came to 
birth or attained their maturity. It has been com- 
plained, with some justice, that I dump my note-books 
on the public. I think that only after a long struggle 
will poetry attain such a degree of development, of, if 
you will, modernity, that it will vitally concern people 
who are accustomed, in prose, to Henry James and Ana- 
tole France, in music to Debussy. I am constantly con- 
tending that it took two centuries of Provence and one 
of Tuscany to develop the media of Dante's master- 
work, that it took the latinists of the Renaissance, and 
the Pleiade, and his own age of painted speech to pre- 
pare Shakespeare his tools. It is tremendously im- 
portant that great poetry be written, it makes no jot of 
difference who writes it. The experimental demonstra- 
tions of one man may save the time of many — hence my 
furore over Arnaut Daniel — if a man's experiments try 
out one new rime, or dispense conclusively with one iota 
of currently accepted nonsense, he is merely playing fair 
with his colleagues when he chalks up his result. 

No man ever writes very much poetry that ' ' matters. ' ' 
In bulk, that is, no one produces much that is final, and 
when a man is not doing this highest thing, this saying 
1 Dante, De Volgari Eloquio. 



A RETROSPECT 105 

the thing once for all and perfectly; when he is not 
matching IIoiKLX66pov% aOdvar *A<^/3oSiTa, or ''Hist — 
said Kate the Queen," he had much better be making 
the sorts of experiment which may be of use to him in 
his later work, or to his successors. 

"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." It is 
a foolish thing for a man to begin his work on a too 
narrow foundation, it is a disgraceful thing for a man's 
work not to show steady growth and increasing fineness 
from first to last. 

As for ' ' adaptations ' ' ; one finds that all the old mas- 
ters of painting recommend to their pupils that they 
begin by copying masterwork, and proceed to their own 
composition. 

As for ''Every man his own poet." The more every 
man knows about poetry the better. I believe in every 
one writing poetry who wants to ; most do. I believe in 
every man knowing enough of music to play ' ' God bless 
our home" on the harmonicum, but I do not believe in 
every man giving concerts and printing his sin. 

The mastery of any art is the work of a lifetime. I 
should not discriminate between the ' ' amateur ' ' and the 
"professional," or rather I should discriminate quite 
often in favour of the amateur, but I should discrimi- 
nate between the amateur and the expert. It is certain 
that the present chaos will endure until the Art of poetry 
has been preached down the amateur gullet, until there 
is such a general understanding of the fact that poetry 
is an art and not a pastime ; such a knowledge of tech- 
nique ; of technique of surface and technique of content, 
that the amateurs will cease to try to drown out the 
masters. 

If a certain thing was said once for all in Atlantis 



106 DIVISIONS 

or Arcadia, in 450 Before Christ or in 1290 after, it is 
not for us moderns to go saying it over, or to go obscur- 
ing the memory of the dead by saying the same thing 
with less skill and less conviction. 

My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients has 
been one struggle to find out what has been done, once 
for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to 
find out what remains for us to do, and plenty does re- 
main, for if we still feel the same emotions as those 
which launched the thousand ships, it is quite certain 
that we come on these feelings differently, through dif- 
ferent nuances, by different intellectual gradations. 
Each age has its own abounding gifts, yet only some 
ages transmute them into matter of duration. No good 
poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for 
to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the 
writer thinks from books, convention and cliche, and not 
from life, yet a man feeling the divorce of life and his 
art may naturally try to resurrect a forgotten mode if 
he find in that mode some leaven, or if he think he sees 
in it some element lacking in contemporary art which 
might unite that art again to its sustenance, life. 

In the art of Daniel and Cavalcanti, I have seen that 
precision which I miss in the Victorians — that explicit 
rendering, be it of external nature, or of emotion. Their 
testimony is of the eyewitness, their symptoms are first 
hand. 

As for the nineteenth century, with all respect to its 
achievements, I think we shall look back upon it as a 
rather blurry, messy sort of a period, a rather senti- 
mentalistic, mannerish sort of a period. I say this with- 
out any self -righteousness, with no self-satisfaction. 

As for there being a ''movement" or my being of it, 



A RETROSPECT 107 

the conception of poetry as a ''pure art" in the sense in 
which I use the term, revived with Swinburne. From 
the puritanical revolt to Swinburne, poetry had been 
merely the vehicle — yes, definitely, Arthur Symons' 
scruples and feelings about the word not withholding — 
the ox-cart and post-chaise for transmitting thoughts 
poetic or otherwise. And perhaps the ''great Victori- 
ans," though it is doubtful, and assuredly the "nineties" 
continued the development of the art, confining their 
improvements, however, chiefly to sound and to refine- 
ments of manner. 

Mr. Yeats has once and for all stripped English poetry 
of its perdamnable rhetoric. He has boiled away all 
that is not poetic — and a good deal that is. He has 
become a classic in his own lifetime and nel mezzo del 
cammin. He has made our poetic idiom a thing pliable, 
a speech without inversions. 

Robert Bridges, Maurice Hewlett and Frederic Man- 
ning are ^ in their different ways seriously concerned 
with overhauling the metric, in testing the language and 
its adaptability to certain modes. Ford Hueffer is mak- 
ing some sort of experiments in modernity. The Pro- 
vost of Oriel continues his translation of the Divina Corn- 
media. 

As to Twentieth century poetry, and the poetry which 
I expect to see written during the next decade or so, it 
will, I think, move against poppy-cock, it will be harder 
and saner, it will be what Mr. Hewlett calls '^nearer the 
bone." It will be as much like granite as it can be, its 
force will lie in its truth, its interpretative power (of 
course, poetic force does always rest there) ; I mean it 
will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and lux- 
1 (Dec, 1911.) 



108 DIVISIONS 

urious riot. We will have fewer painted adjectives im- 
peding the shock and stroke of it. At least for myself, 
I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither. 



What is there now, in 1917, to be added? 

RE VERS LIBRE 

I think the desire for vers libre is due to the sense of 
quantity reasserting itself after years of starvation. 
But I doubt if we can take over, for English, the rules 
of quantity laid down for greek and latin, mostly by 
latin grammarians. 

I think one should write vers libre only when one 
''must," that is to say, only when the ''thing" builds 
up a rhythm more beautiful than that of set metres, or 
more real, more a part of the emotion of the "thing," 
more germane, intimate, interpretative than the meas- 
ure of regular accentual verse ; a rhythm which discon- 
tents one with set iambic or set anapaestic. 

Eliot has said the thing very well when he said, "No 
vers is lihre for the man who wants to do a good job." 

As a matter of detail, there is vers libre with accent 
heavily marked as a drum-beat (as par example my 
"Dance Figure"), and on the other hand I think I have 
gone as far as can profitably be gone in the other di- 
rection (and perhaps too far). I mean I do not think 
one can use to any advantage rhythms much more ten- 
uous and imperceptible than some I have used. I think 
progress lies rather in an attempt to approximate clas- 
sical quantitative metres (NOT to copy them) than in 
a carelessness regarding such things.^ 

iLet me date this statement 20. Aug., 1917. 



A RETROSPECT 109 

I agree with John Yeats on the relation of beauty to 
certitude. I prefer satire, which is due to emotion, to 
any sham of emotion. 

I have had to write, or at least I have written a good 
deal about art, sculpture, painting and poetry. I have 
seen what seemed to me the best of contemporary work 
reviled and obstructed. Can any one write prose of 
permanent or durable interest when he is merely saying 
for one year what nearly every one will say at the end 
of three or four years? I have been battistrada for a 
sculptor, a painter, a novelist, several poets. I wrote 
also of certain French writers in The New Age in nine- 
teen twelve or eleven. 

I would much rather that people would look at Brzes- 
ka's sculpture and Lewis' drawings, and that they would 
read Joyce, Jules Romains, Eliot, than that they should 
read what I have said of these men, or that I should be 
asked to republish argumentative essays and reviews. 

All that the critic can do for the reader or audience 
or spectator is to focus his gaze or audition. Rightly 
or wrongly I think my blasts and essays have done their 
work, and that more people are now likely to go to the 
sources than are likely to read this book. 

Jammes' ''Existences" in "La Triomphe de la Vie" is 
available. So are his early poems. I think we need a 
convenient anthology rather than descriptive criticism. 
Carl Sandburg wrote me from Chicago, ''It's hell wherf 
poets can't afford to buy each other's books." Half 
the people who care, only borrow. In America so few 
people know each other that the difficulty lies more than 
half in distribution. Perhaps one should make an an- 
thology: Romains' "Un Etre en Marche" and 
"Prieres," Vildrac's "Visite." Retrospectively the 
fine wrought work of La Forgue, the flashes of Rimbaud, 



110 DIVISIONS 

the hard-bit lines of Tristan Corbiere, Tailhade's 
sketches in ''Poemes Aristophanesques, " the "Litanies" 
of DeGourmont. 



It is difficult at all times to write of the fine arts, it 
is almost impossible unless one can accompany one's 
prose with many reproductions. Still I would seize this 
chance or any chance to reaffirm my belief in Wyndham 
Lewis' genius, both in his drawings and his writings. 
And I would name an out of the way prose book, the 
"Scenes and Portraits" of Frederic Manning, as well 
as James Joyce's short stories and novel, "Dubliners" 
and the now well known "Portrait of the Artist," as 
well as Lewis' "Tarr," if, that is, I may treat my 
strange reader as if he were a new friend come into the 
room, intent on ransacking my bookshelf. 

ONLY EMOTION ENDURES 

"Only emotion endures." Surely it is better for me 
to name over the feWvib^autiful poems that still ring in 
my head than for me to search my flat for back num- 
bers of periodicals and rearrange all that I have said 
about friendly and hostile writers. 

The first twelve lines of Padraic Colum's "Drover"; 
his "0 Woman shapely as a swan, on your account I 
shall not die"; Joyce's "I hear an army"; the lines of 
Yeats that ring in my head and in the heads of all young 
men of my time who care for poetr^'^: Braseal and the 
Fisherman, "The fire that stirs about her when she 
stirs"; the later lines of "The Scholars" the faces of 
the Magi; William Carlos Williams' "Postlude," Ald- 
ington's version of "Atthis," and "H. D.'s" waves like 
pine tops, and her verse in "Des Imagistes" the first 



A RETROSPECT 111 

anthology; Hueffer's ''How red your lips are" in his 
translation from Von der Vogelweide, his "Three Ten," 
the general effect of his "On Heaven"; his sense of the 
prose values or prose qualities in poetry; his ability to 
write poems that will sing to music, as distinct from 
poems that half -chant and are spoiled by a musician's 
additions; beyond these a poem by Alice Corbin, "One 
City Only," and another ending "But sliding water 
over a stone." These things have worn smooth in my 
head and I am not through with them, nor with Alding- 
ton 's "In Via Sestina" nor his other poems in "Des 
Imagistes" though people have told me their flaws. It 
may be that their content is too much embedded in me 
for me to look back at the words. 

I am almost a different person when I come to take up 
the argument for Eliot's poems. 



REMY DE GOURMONT 



It is foolish, perhaps, to say that a man "stands for 
all that is best in such and such a country." It is a 
vague phrase, and the use of vague phrases is foolish, 
and yet Remy de Gourmont had in some way made him- 
self into a symbol of so much that is finest in Prance 
that one is tempted to apply some such phrase to him. 

I think no man in France could have died leaving so 
personal a sense of loss among scattered groups of intel- 
ligent young men who had never laid eyes on him. I 
do not mean to say that he was the "greatest writer in 
France." That method of assessing authors by size is 
unfortunate and Victorian. There were in France a few 
pre-eminently good writers: Anatole France, Remy de 
Gourmont, Henri de Regnier, Francis Jammes, Laurent 
Tailhade. There are popular figures and crazes like 
Maeterlinck, Claudel, and Paul Fort. I am not an ex- 
amining board trying to determine which of these gentle- 
men is to receive the highest award. I am not determin- 
ing a percentage of bay leaves. The writings of the five 
first-mentioned men are all of them indispensable to one 's 
comfort. 

Yet before the war Anatole France was so old that 
communication between him and the active part of our 
world had almost ceased. And Henri de Regnier was 
set apart, as it were, amid "The Spoils of Poynton," 

1 The Fortnightly Review, 1915. 

112 



REMY DE GOURMONT 113 

or behind some such metaphorical barrier. And 
Jammes, after four beautiful books to his credit, had 
gone gaga over Catholicism, and from Remy de Gour- 
mont alone there proceeded a personal, living force. 
''Force" is almost a misnomer; let us call it a personal 
light. 

The man was infused through his work. If you ''hold 
a pistol to my head ' ' and say : ' ' Produce the masterpiece 
on which you base these preposterous claims for De 
Gourmont ! " I might not be able to lay out an array of 
books to equal those of his elder friend, Anatole France, 
or of De Regnier, or to find three volumes of poems to 
compare with the first books by Francis Jammes, or, in- 
deed, to uphold that test against various men whose 
names I have not mentioned. You, on the other hand, 
would be in very much the same fix if you were com- 
manded suddenly to produce the basis of your respect 
for De Quincey or Coleridge. 

It is, I think, Coleridge who says that the test of a 
great poet is not to be found in individual passages, but 
in a mysterious pervasive essence, "everywhere present 
and nowhere a distinct excitement. ' ' 

As you read De Gourmont 's work it is not any par- 
ticular phrase, poem, or essay that holds you, so much 
as a continuing sense of intelligence, of a limpid, active 
intelligence in the mind of the writer. 

I express, perhaps, a personal and an unpopular emo- 
tion when I say that this constant sense of the intelli- 
gence of the man behind the writing is a great comfort. 
I even hope that intelligence, in writers, is coming back, 
if not into fashion, at least into favour with a public 
large enough to make certain kinds of books once more 
printable. We have suffered a period in which the glori- 
fication of stupidity and the worship of unintelligent, 



114 DIVISIONS 

' ' messy ' ' energy have been too much encouraged. (With 
the appearance of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, and the 
more "normal" part of Mr. Wyndham Lewis's narra- 
tive writings, one may even hope that intelligence shall 
once more have its innings, even in our own stalwart 
tongue.) 

The qualities of Remy de Gourmont's intelligence? 
Limpidity and fairness and graciousness, and irony, and 
a sensuous charm in his decoration when he chose to 
make his keen thought flash out against a richly-coloured 
background; these things were all in his writing. The 
peculiarity of his narrative work may have been just 
this method of resting the mind as it were by an 
"aroma." What shall I call it? 

He stirs the "senses of the imagination," the reader 
is pervaded by luxurious rest, and then when the mind 
is most open, De Gourmont darts in with his acumen, a 
thrust, an incisive or revolutionary idea, spoken so softly. 

His "Diomedes" searches for truth in the Rue Bona- 
parte and environs. As Turgenev builds up a whole 
novel to enforce two or three Russian proverbs ; to make 
you know that he, the author, has understood some very 
simple phrase in all its profundity; as in the "Nichee 
de Gentilshommes " he has put first, "The heart of 
another is a dark forest, ' ' and then in the middle of the 
book, man, his hero, opposed to the old trees of his dis- 
mantled garden, and then finally old Maria Timofevna's 
"Nothing but death is irrevocable," so, in a very dif- 
ferent manner Remy de Gourmont has embedded his 
philosophy in a luxurious mist of the senses. But this 
particularity of method would in itself amount to very 
little. 

De Gourmont wrote twice a month, a little ' ' Epilogue ' ' 
in the Mercure de France. Early in his career he had 



REMY DE GOURMONT 115 

written a large and beautiful book "Le Latin Mystique 
du Moyen Age, ' ' and in this book he laid before his few 
readers a great amount of forgotten beauty, the beauty 
of a period slighted by philological scholars. These were 
causes contributory to his position, but no one of them 
would have accounted for it. 

His work had what very little work ever has, despite 
continuous advertisements to the contrary. It had a 
personal charm, and this charm was that of intelligence. 

Ideas came to him as a series of fine wines to a delicate 
palate, and he was never inebriated. He never ran 
amok. And this is the whole difference between the 
French and Tedescan systems: a German never knows 
when a thought is "only to be thought" — to be thought 
out in all its complexity and its beauty — and when it is 
to be made a basis of action. 

I believe England guards against such mistakes by 
mistrusting thought altogether. At least I once saw a 
very amusing encounter, as follows: A Russian, who 
had taken degrees at Leipzig on prehistoric Greek philos- 
ophers, came to England. He believed that ''The Ger- 
mans are the only Greeks of to-day. ' ' He was going, at 
least he said he was going, "to convert England to 
philosophy. ' ' It was a noble adventure. 

He propounded his crusade in a company consisting of 
two foreigners, myself, and one Englishman. All the 
Englishman said was, "I don't believe in ideas." 

It was a very sincere personal statement. The Russian 
shortly afterwards retired to Paris, to start a peripatetic 
school in the "Jardins du Luxembourg," but he finally 
went to America, and was at once made a professor.^ 

England has been very safe with her "Don't believe 

1 This tale is not a figment of my imagination ; it is not alle- 
gory, but fact. 



116 DIVISIONS 

in ideas. ' ' Germany has got decidedly and disgustingly 
drunk. But Paris is the laboratory of ideas ; it is there 
that poisons can be tested, and new modes of sanity be 
discovered. It is there that the antiseptic conditions of 
the laboratory exist. That is the function of Paris. 

It was peculiarly the function of De Gourmont. 

For years he has written '' controversially, " if I may 
use a word with such strong connotations. I believe he 
has never once made an over-statement, or, for that mat- 
ter, an under-statement of his thought. I don't say that 
he has always been right. But he had this absolute fair- 
ness, the fairness of a man watching his own experiment 
in laboratory. And this absolute fairness, this absolute 
openness to all thought, is precisely the most difficult 
thing to attain. 

We are all touched with the blight of Tertullian. 
Whatever our aims and ambitions and our firm convic- 
tion to the contrary, we have our moments off guard 
when we become unfair, and partisan, and personal in 
our spite, and intolerant. 

De Gourmont carried his lucidity to the point of 
genius. All ideas, all works of art, all writing came to 
him, and he received them all graciously, and he praised 
graciously, or ignored graciously. And he wrote beau- 
tifully and graciously from himself. He was the friend 
of intelligence. He had not lost touch with 'Hes jeunes.^' 

And that last is more important and more difficult 
than one might think. If a man has "come in" with 
one generation and taken part in the development of 
and triumph of one "new" set of ideas, it is especially 
and peculiarly difficult for him to adapt himself to the 
next set, which comes in some twenty years later. No 
man can lead two movements, and it is very hard for him 
to understand two movements. A movement degenerates 



REMY DE GOURMONT 117 

into over-emphasis. It begins with the recognition of a 
neglect. When youth is divided into acrimonious parties 
it is perhaps difficult for age to tell which side has the 
intelligence, but you could trust Remy de Gourmont to 
discover intelligence in whatever form it might appear. 

It is a slight thing that I am going to tell now, but it 
is not without its minute significance. When I was in 
Paris some years ago I happened, by merest accident, 
to be plunged into a meeting, a vortex of twenty men, 
and among them five or six of the most intelligent young 
men in Paris. I should say that Paris is a place like 
another; in ''literature" the French are cursed with 
amorphous thought, rhetoric, bombast, Claudel, &c., stale 
Hugo, stale Corneille, &c., just as we are cursed here 
with stale Victoriana, stale Miltoniana, &c. The young 
party of intelligence in Paris, a party now just verging 
on the threshold of middle-age, is the group that centred 
about ''L'Effort Libre." It contains Jules Romains, 
Vildrac, Duhamel, Chenneviere, Jouve, and their friends. 
These men were plotting a gigantic blague. A ' ' blague ' ' 
when it is a fine blague is a satire upon stupidity, an 
attack. It is the weapon of intelligence at bay; of in- 
telligence fighting against an alignment of odds. These 
men were thorough. They had exposed a deal of igno- 
rance and stupidity in places where there should have 
been the reverse. They w^ere serious, and they were 
''keeping it up." And the one man they mentioned 
with sympathy, the one older man to whom they could 
look for comprehension, and even for discreet assist- 
ance, was Remy de Gourmont. Remy would send them 
a brief telegram to be read at their public meeting. 

That is, at first sight, a very trifling matter, but, if 
examined closely, it shows a number of things: first, 
that de Gourmont was absolutely independent, that he 



118 DIVISIONS 

was not tied to any institution, that his position was 
based on his intelligence alone and not on his ''connec- 
tions" (as I believe they are called in our "literary 
world"). 

" Franchement d'ecrire ce qu'on pense, seul plaisir 
d'un ecrivain." "To put down one's thought frankly, 
a writer's one pleasure." That phrase was the centre 
of Gourmont's position. It was not a phrase under- 
stood superficially. It is as much the basis of a clean 
literature, of all literature worth the name, as is an anti- 
septic method, the basis of sound surgical treatment. 

" Franchement, " "Frankly," is "Frenchly," if one 
may drag in philology. If, in ten lines or in a hundred 
pages, I can get the reader to comprehend what that one 
adjective means in literature, what it means to all civ- 
ilisation, I shall have led him part of the way toward 
an understanding of de Gourmont's importance. 

"Frankly" does not mean "grossly." It does not 
mean the over-emphasis of neo-realism, of red-bloodism, 
of slums dragged into light, of men writing while drugged 
with two or three notions, or with the lust for an epi- 
gram. It means simply that a man writes his thought, 
that is to say, his doubts, his inconclusions as well as his 
"convictions," which last are so often borrowed affairs. 

There is no lasting shelter between an intelligent man 
and his own perception of truth, but nine-tenths of all 
writing displays an author trying, by force of will, to 
erect such shelter for others. De Gourmont was one of 
the rare authors who did not make this stupid endeavour ; 
who wholly eschewed malingering. 

It was not a puritanical privation for him, it was his 
nature to move in this way. The mind, the imagination 
is the proper domain of freedom. The body, the outer 
world, is the proper domain of fraternal deference. 



REMY DE GOURMONT 119 

The tedium and the habit of the great ruck of writers 
is that they are either incoherent and amorphous, or 
else they write in conformity to, or in defence of, a set 
of fixed, rigid notions, instead of disclosing their 
thought . . . which might, in rare cases, be interesting. 
It is to be noted that de Gourmont is never tedious. 
That is the magic of clarity. 

''A very few only, and without gain or joy to them- 
selves, can transform directly the acts of others into 
their own personal thoughts, the multitude of men 
thinks only thoughts already emitted, feels but feelings 
used up, and has but sensations as faded as old gloves. 
When a new word arrives at its destination, it arrives 
like a post-card that has gone round the world and on 
which the handwriting is blurred and obliterated with 
blots and stains." I open the ''Chevaux de Diomedes" 
at random and come upon that passage of Gourmont 's 
thought. 

"Non e mai tarde per tentar I'ignoto, 
Non e mai tarde per andar piu oltre, ' ' 

but it was never with the over-orchestration of the ro- 
mantic period, nor with the acrid and stupid crudity 
of societies for the propagation of this, that, and the 
other, that de Gourmont 's mind went placidly out into 
new fields. 

He never abandoned beauty. The mountain stream 
may be as antiseptic as the sterilised dressing. There 
was the quality and the completeness of life in de 
Gourmont 's mode of procedure. Just as there is more 
wisdom, perhaps more "revolution," in Whistler's por- 
trait of young Miss Alexander than in all the Judaic 
drawings of the "prophetic" Blake, so there is more 
life in Remy than in all the reformers. 



120 DIVISIONS 

Voltaire called in a certain glitter to assist him. De 
Gourmont's ultimate significance may not be less than 
Voltaire's. He walked gently through the field of his 
mind. His reach, his ultimate efficiency are just this; 
he thought things which other men cannot, for an in- 
definitely prolonged period of time, be prevented from 
thinking. His thoughts were not merely the fixed men- 
tal habits of the animal homo. 

And I call the reader to witness that he, de Gour- 
mont, differed from Fabians, Webbists, Shavians (all of 
whom, along with all dealers in abstractions, are ulti- 
mately futile). He differed from them in that his 
thoughts had the property of life. They, the thoughts, 
were all related to life, they were immersed in the mani- 
fest universe while he thought them, they were not cut 
out, put on shelves and in bottles. 

Anyone who has read him will know what I mean. 
Perhaps it is quite impossible to explain it to one who 
has not. 



In poetry as in prose de Gourmont has built up 
his own particular form. I am not sure that he was 
successful, in fact I am rather convinced that he was 
not successful in the ''Simone," where he stays nearer 
the poetic forms invented by others. His own mode 
began, I think, with the translation of the very beau- 
tiful "sequaire" of Goddeschalk in ''Le Latin Mys- 
tique." This he made, very possibly, the basis of his 
''Livre de Litanies," at least this curious evocational 
form, the curious repetitions, the personal sweeping 
rhythm, are made wholly his own, and he used them 
later in "Les Saints de Paradis," and last of all in the 
prose sonnets. 



REMY DE GOURMONT 121 

These ''sonnets" are amon^ the few successful en- 
deavours to write poetry of our own time. I know there 
is much superficial modernity, but in these prose son- 
nets Remy de Gourmont has solved the two thorniest 
questions. The first difficulty in a modern poem is to 
give a feeling of the reality of the speaker, the second, 
given the reality of the speaker, to gain any degree of 
poignancy in one's utterance. 

That is to say, you must begin in a normal, natural 
tone of voice, and you must, somewhere, express or cause 
a deep feeling. I am, let us say, in an omnibus with 
Miscio Itow. He has just seen some Japanese armour 
and says it is like his grandfather's, and then simply 
running on in his own memory he says: ''When I 
first put on my grandfather's helmet, my grandmother 
cried . . . because I was so like what my grandfather 
was at eighteen." 

You may say that Itow is himself an exotic, but still, 
there is material for an hokku, and poetry does touch 
modern life, or at least pass over it swiftly, though it 
does not much appear in modern verses. 

De Gourmont has not been driven even to an exotic 
speaker. His sonnets begin in the metropolis. The 
speaker is past middle age. It is a discussion of what 
he calls in the course of the sequence of poems "la 
geometric subordonnee du corps humain." 

I shall give a dozen or more phrases from the sequence 
(which consists, if I remember rightly, of about two 
dozen poems) . By this means I shall try to give, not a 
continuous meaning, but simply the tone, the conversa- 
tional, ironic, natural tone of the writing, the scien- 
tific dryness, even, as follows: — 

"Mes deductions sont certains. . . . 
"Mais le blanc est fondamental. ... 



122 DIVISIONS 

"J'ai plus aime les yeux que toutes les autres manifestations 
corporelles de la beaute. . . . 

"Les yeux sont le manometre de la machine animale. . . . 

"Et leurs paroles signifient le desir de I'etre, ou la plaeidite 
de sa volonte. . . . 

"Mais on pense aussi avec les mains, avec les genoux, avec 
les yeux, avec la bouche et avec le cceur. On pense avec tous 
les organes, . . . 

"Et a vrai dire, nous ne sommes peut-etre que pensee. . . . 

"Je parlerais des yeux, je chanterais les yeux toute ma vie. 
Je sais toutes leurs couleurs et toutes leurs volontes, leur 
destinee. . . . 

"Dont je n'ignore pas les correspondances. . . . 

"C'est une belle chose qu'une tete de femme, librement in- 
scrite dans le cercle esthetique. . . ." 

Or even more solidly : — 

"Je sculpte une hypothese dans le marbre de la logique 
eternelle. . . . 

"Les epaules sont des sources d'ou descend la fluidite des 
bras. . . ." 

And then, when one is intent and wholly off guard, 
comes, out of this ' ' unpoetic, ' ' unemotional constatation, 
the passage: — 

"Les yeux se font des discours entre eux. 
Pres de se temir ... les miens te parleront encore, mais ils 

n'emporteront pas bien loin ta reponse. 
Car on n'emporte rien, on meurt. Laisse-moi done regarder 
les yeux que j'ai deeouverts, 

Les yeux qui me survivront." 

He has worn off the trivialities of the day, he has 
conquered the fret of contemporaneousness by exhaust- 
ing it in his pages of dry discussion, and we come on the 



REMY DE GOURMONT 123 

feeling, the poignancy, as directly as we do in the old 
poet's^ — 

A.eyoL(Tiv at yvvaiKe's 

AvaKpiiov yepcov el. 

*'Dicunt mihi puellae 
Anacreon senex es." 

It is the triumph of skill and reality, though it is 
barbarous of me to try to represent the force of the 
original poems by such a handful of phrases taken at 
random, and I am not trying to convince anyone who 
will not read the ' ' Sonnets in Prose ' ' for himself. 

II 1 

Remy de Gourmont is dead and the world's light is 
darkened. This is another of the crimes of the war, for 
de Gourmont was only fifty-seven, and if he had not 
been worried to death, if he had not been grieved to 
death by the cessation of all that has been ''life" as he 
understood it, there was no reason why we should not 
have had more of his work and his company. 

He is as much "dead of the war" as if he had died in 
the trenches, and he left with almost the same words on 
his lips. "Nothing is being done in Paris, nothing can 
be done, faute de comhattants/' There was an elegy on 
current writing by him in the Mercure. It was almost 
the same tone in which Gaudier-Brzeska wrote to me a 
few days before he was shot at Neuville St. Vaast : "Is 
anything of importance or even of interest going on in 
the world — I mean the 'artistic London'?" 

Remy de Gourmont is irreplaceable. I think I do not 
write for myself alone when I say no other Frenchman 
could have died leaving so personal a sense of loss in 

1 Poetry, Jan., 1916. 



124 DIVISIONS 

the minds of many young men who had never laid eyes 
on him. Some fames and reputations are like that; 
Mallarme is almost a mantram, a word for conjuring. 
A critique of de Gourmont's poetry would be by no 
means a critique of his influence. For, again, I think 
that every young man in London whose work is worth 
considering at all, has felt that in Paris existed this 
gracious presence, this final and kindly tribunal where 
all work would stand on its merits. One had this sense 
of absolute fairness — no prestige, no over-emphasis, 
could work upon it. 

^'Permettre a ceux qui en valent la peine d'ecrire 
franchement ce qu'il pense — seul plaisir d'un ecrivain'' : 
these were almost the last words he wrote to me, save a 
postscript on the outside of the envelope; and they are 
almost his ''whole law and gospel." And indeed a 
right understanding of them means the whole civiliza- 
tion of letters. 

Outside a small circle in Paris and a few scattered 
groups elsewhere, this civilization does not exist. Yet 
the phrase is so plain and simple: ''to permit those who 
are worth it to write frankly what they think. ' ' 

That is the destruction of all rhetoric and all journal- 
ism. I mean that when a nation, or a group of men, or 
an editor, arrives at the state of mind where he really 
understands that phrase, rhetoric and journalism are 
done with. The true aristocracy is founded, permanent 
and indestructible. It is also the end of log-rolling, 
the end of the British school of criticism for the preser- 
vation of orderly and innocuous persons. It is the end 
of that "gravity" to which Sterne alludes as "a mys- 
terious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the 
mind." 

De Gourmont did not make over-statements. His 



REMY DE GOURMONT 125 

Diomedes is a hero because he is facing life, he is facing 
it quite sincerely, with no protection whatever. Ibsen 
with his smoky lightning had rumbled out, "There is 
no intermediator between God and man." De Gour- 
mont, with his perfect and gracious placidity, had im- 
plied — yes, implied, made apparent rather than stated — 
that no formula can stand between man and life; or 
rather that no creed, no dogma, can protect the think- 
ing man from looking at life directly, forming his own 
thought from his own sensuous contact and from his con- 
tact with thoughts. 

Nietzsche has done no harm in France because France 
has understood that thought can exist apart from action ; 
that it is perfectly fitting and expedient clearly to think 
certain things which it is neither fitting nor expedient 
to ''spoil by action." 

"Spoil by action" is perhaps a bad memory of the 
phrase; but just as Dante was able to consider two 
thoughts as blending and giving off music, so Diomedes 
in De Gourmont's story is able to think things which 
translation into action would spoil. As for Diomedes' 
career, I am perfectly willing to accept Robert Frost's 
statement that "there is nothing like it in New Eng- 
land." What there is in all provincial places is an at- 
tem.pt to suppress part of the evidence, to present life 
out of proportion with itself, squared to fit some local 
formula of respectability. 

Remy de Gourmont had written throughout his life in 
absolute single-blessedness ; it was to express his thought, 
his delicate, subtle, quiet and absolutely untrammeled 
revery, with no regard whatsoever for existing belief, 
with no after-thought or beside-thought either to con- 
form or to avoid conforming. That is the sainthood of 
literature. 



126 DIVISIONS 

I think I can show what I mean almost by a single 
sentence. In the midst of the present whirlwind of 
abuse he said quietly: ''By Kultur, the Germans mean 
what we mean by 'state education.' " 

It had been so all his life ; on whatever matter, how- 
ever slight the matter or however strong his own pas- 
sion, there had been that same quiet precision, that same 
ultimate justness. 

The rest of us are caught in the flurry of controversy. 
Remy de Gourmont had found — it might not be incor- 
rect to say that Paris had given him — a place where all 
things could be said quietly and openly, where one 
would not think of circumlocution and prejudice, where 
circumlocution and prejudice would have seemed un- 
natural. 

En toils les pays il y a un noyau de hons esprits, 
d' esprit s lihres. II faut leur donner quelque chose qui 
les change de la fadeur des magazines, quelque chose qui 
leur donne co7ifiance en eux-memes, et leur soit un point 
d'appui. 

That is good news, but for years M. de Gourmont had 
believed it and written accordingly. He had written 
selflessly, and was glad when other men could write well. 
He dared to write for the few, for the few who are not 
a clique or a faction, but who are united by the ability 
to think clearly, and who do not attempt to warp or to 
smother this faculty; who do not suppress part of the 
evidence. 

The significance of Eemy de Gourmont and the signifi- 
cance of his poetry are two things apart. He has writ- 
ten for the most part beautiful prose, much controversy, 
a book on "Le Latin Mystique du Moyen Age," etc. 
He has written a poeme champetre and some Litanies. 



REMY DE GOURMONT 127 

I have praised these litanies elsewhere, and a man's 
obituary notice is not, perhaps, the best place for analyz- 
ing his metric. Suffice it to say that the litanies are a 
marvel of rhythm, that they have not been followed or 
repeated, that de Gourmont was not of ''the young 
French school. ' ' If he is ' ' grouped ' ' anywhere he must 
be grouped, as poet, among les symbolistes. The lit- 
anies are evocation, not statement. 

De Gourmont was indubitably "of the young" in the 
sense that his mind had not lost its vigor, that he was 
alive to contemporaiy impressions, that he had not gone 
gaga over Catholicism like poor Francis Jammes, nor 
wallowed in metrical journalism like the ill-starred Paul 
Fort. He had never lost touch with the men born ten 
or twenty years after he was; for a man of fifty-seven 
that is a very considerable achievement. Or rather it 
is not an achievement, for it can not be done by effort; 
it can only come from a natural freshness and aliveness 
of the mind, and is a matter of temperament. 

I had forgotten the French Academy until an article 
in L'Humanite reminded me that de Gourmont was 
not a member thereof ; that the ancient association which 
contains Auguste Swallou, Thibaudet de Mimmil, and 
so many other ' ' immortals ' ' had not seen fit to elect him. 

It is evident that the "Academic Francoise" has out- 
lived its usefulness, and if France does not set an ex- 
ample what can be expected of other academies? In 
de Gourmont 's case the academy had no excuse. He had 
not only written supremel}^, but he had given back to 
the world a lost beauty — in Le Latin Mystique, in the 
Seqiiaire of Goddeschalk with its Amas ut facias pul- 
chram. 

But perhaps, as a friend of mine wrote when Swin- 
burne was refused sepulture in Westminster Abbey 



128 DIVISIONS 

(they said there was no room and buried the canon's 
wife the week after) , perhaps, as my friend wrote at the 
time, "perhaps it is just as well — he suffered fools 
badly." 

I have known also that the really distinguished mem- 
ber, at a meeting of another ''great body," encouraged 
one of his more serious colleagues, who was showing 
signs of tedium, with "Come, come, we are not here to 
enjoy ourselves." 

De Gourmont has gone — 

Blandula, tenulla, vagula — 

almost with a jest on his lips, for his satire on M. Cro- 
quant et la Guerre continues in the current Mercure. 



MR. HUEFFER AND THE PROSE TRADITION IN 
VERSE ^ 

In a country in love with amateurs, in a country where 
the incompetent have such beautiful manners and per- 
sonalities so fragile and charming; that one can not bear 
to injure their feelings by the introduction of competent 
criticism, it is well that one man should have a vision 
of perfection and that he should be sick to the death 
and disconsolate because he can not attain it. 

Mr. Yeats wrote years ago that the highest poetry is 
so precious that one should be willing to search many a 
dull tome to find and gather the fragments. As touch- 
ing poetry this was, perhaps, no new feeling. Yet 
where nearly everyone else is still dominated by an 
eighteenth-century verbalism, Mr. Hueffer has had this 
instinct for prose. It is he who has insisted, in the face 
of a still- Victorian press, upon the importance of good 
writing as opposed to the opalescent word, the rhetorical 
tradition. Stendhal had said, and Flaubert, De Mau- 
passant and Turgenev had proved, that ''prose was the 
higher art" — at least their prose. 

It is impossible to talk about perfection without get- 
ting yourself very much disliked. It is even more diffi- 
cult in a capital where everybod,y's Aunt Lucy or 
Uncle George has written something or other, and where 
the victory of any standard save that of mediocrity would 
at once banish so many nice people from the temple of 

1 Poetry, June, 1914. 

129 



180 DIVISIONS 

immortality. So it comes about that Mr. Hueffer is the 
best critic in England, one might say the only critic of 
any importance. What he says today the press, the re- 
viewers, who hate him and who disparage his books, 
will say in about nine years' time, or possibly sooner. 
Shelley, Yeats, Swinburne, with, respectively, their "un- 
acknowledged legislators," with "Nothing affects these 
people except our conversation," with "The rest live 
under us"; Remy de Gourmont, when he says that most 
men think only husks and shells of the thoughts that have 
been already lived over by others, have shown their very 
just appreciation of the system of echoes, of the general 
vacuity of public opinion. America is like England, 
America is very much what England would be with the 
two hundred most interesting people removed. One's 
life is the score of this two hundred with whom one 
happens to have made friends. I do not see that we 
need to say the rest live under them, but it is certain 
that what these people say comes to pass. They live in 
their mutual credence, and thus they live things over 
and fashion them before the rest of the world is aware. 
I dare say it is a Cassandra-like and useless faculty, at 
least from the world's point of view. Mr. Hueffer has 
possessed the peculiar faculty of ' ' foresight, " or of con- 
structive criticism, in a pre-eminent degree. 

And if you think things ten or fifteen or twenty years 
before anyone else thinks them you will be considered 
absurd and ridiculous. Some professor feels that if cer- 
tain ideas gain ground he will have to rewrite his lec- 
tures, some parson feels that if certain other ideas are 
accepted he will have to throw up his position. They 
search for the forecaster's weak points. 

Mr. Hueffer is still underestimated for another rea- 
son : namely, that we have not yet learned that prose is, 



THE PROSE TRADITION 131 

perhaps, as precious and as mucli to be sought after as 
verse, even its shreds and patches. So that, if one of 
the finest chapters in English is hidden in a claptrap 
novel, we cannot weigh the vision which made it against 
the weariness or the confusion which dragged down the 
rest of the work. Yet we would do this readily with a 
poem. If a novel have a form as distinct as that of a 
sonnet, and if its workmanship be as fine as that of some 
Pleiade rondel, we complain of the slightness of the 
motive. Yet we would not deny praise to the rondel. 
So it remains for a prose craftsman like Mr. Arnold 
Bennett to speak well of Mr. Hueffer's prose, and for 
a verse-craftsman like myself to speak well of his verses. 
And the general public will have little or none of him 
because he does not put on pontifical robes, because 
he does not take up the megaphone of some known and 
accepted pose, and because he makes enemies among the 
stupid by his rather engaging frankness. 

We may as well begin with the knowledge that Mr. 
Hueffer is a keen critic and a skilled writer of prose, 
and we may add that he is not wholly unsuccessful as a 
composer, and that he has given us, in On Heaven, the 
best longish poem yet written in the ''twentieth-century 
fashion. ' ' 

Coleridge has spoken of ''the miracle that might be 
wrought simply by one man's feeling a thing more 
clearly or more poignantly than anyone had felt it be- 
fore. ' ' The last century showed us a fair example when 
Swinburne awoke to the fact that poetry was an art, 
not merely a vehicle for the propagation of doctrine. 
England and Germany are still showing the effects of 
his perception. I can not belittle my belief that Mr. 
Hueffer's realization that poetry should be written at 
least as well as prose will have as wide a result. He 



132 DIVISIONS 

himself will tell you that it is "all Christina Rossetti," 
and that "it was not "Wordsworth, for Wordsworth was 
so busied about the ordinary word that he never found 
time to think about le mot juste/' 

As for Christina, Mr. Hueffer is a better critic than I 
am, and I would be the last to deny that a certain limpid- 
ity and precision are the ultimate qualities of style ; yet 
I can not accept his opinion. Christina had these qual- 
ities, it is true — in places, but they are to be found also 
in Browning and even in Swinburne at rare moments. 
Christina very often sets my teeth on edge, — and so for 
that matter does Mr. Hueffer. But it is the function of 
criticism to find what a given work is, not what it is not. 
It is also the faculty of a capital or of high civilization 
to value a man for some rare ability, to make use of him 
and not hinder him or itself by asking of him faculties 
which he does not possess. 

Mr. Hueffer may have found certain properties of 
style, first for himself, in Christina, but others have 
found them elsewhere, notably in Amaut Daniel and in 
Guido and in Dante, where Christina herself would have 
found them. Still there is no denying that there is less 
of the ore rot undo in Christina's work than in that of 
her contemporaries, and that there is also in Hueffer 's 
writing a clear descent from such passages as : 

I listened to their honest chat : 

Said one : ' ' Tomorrow we shall be 
Plod plod along the featureless sands 

And coasting miles and miles of sea." 
Said one: "Before the turn of tide 

We will achieve the eyrie-seat." 
Said one : ' ' To-morrow shall be like 

To-day, but much more sweet. ' ' 



THE PROSE TRADITION 133 

We find the qualities of what some people are calling 
'Hhe modern cadence" in this strophe, also in A Dirge, 
in Up Hill, in — 

Somewhere or other there must surely be 
The face not seen, the voice not heard, 

and in — - 

Sometimes I said: "It is an empty name 
I long for ; to a name why should I give 

The peace of all the days I have to live ? ' ' — 
Yet gave it all the same. 

Mr. Hueffer brings to his work a prose training such 
as Christina never had, and it is absolutely the devil to 
try to quote snippets from a man whose poems are 
gracious impressions, leisurely, low-toned. One would 
quote The Starling, but one would have to give the whole 
three pages of it. And one would like to quote patches 
out of the curious medley, To All the Dead, — save that 
the picturesque patches aren't the whole or the feel of 
it; or Siissmund's capricious Address, a sort of Inferno 
to the Heaven. But that also is too long, so I content 
myself with the opening of an earlier poem, Finchley 
Road. 

As we come up at Baker Street 
Where tubes and trains and 'buses meet 
There's a touch of fog and a touch of sleet ; 
And we go on up Hampstead way 
Toward the closing in of day. ... 

You should be a queen or a duchess rather. 
Reigning, instead of a warlike father. 



134 DIVISIONS 

In peaceful times o'er a tiny town, 
Where all the roads wind up and down 
From your little palace — a small, old place 
Where every soul should know your face 
And bless your coming. 

I quote again, from a still earlier poem where the 
quiet of his manner is less marked : 

Being in Rome I wonder will you go 

Up to the Hill. But I forget the name . . . 

Aventine? Pincio? No: I do not know. 

I was there yesterday and watched. You came. 

(7 give the opening only to ^^ place'' the second portion 
of the poem.) 

Though you're in Rome you will not go, my You, 
Up to that Hill . . . but I forget the name. 
Aventine? Pincio? No, I never knew . . . 
I was there yesterday. You never came. 

I have that Rome ; and you, you have a Me, 
You have a Rome, and I, I have my You; 
My Rome is not your Rome : my You, not you. 

For, if man knew woman 

I should have plumbed your heart ; if woman, man, 
Your Me should be true I ... If in your day — 
You who have mingled with my soul in dreams, 
You who have given my life an aim and purpose, 
A heart, an imaged form — if in your dreams 
You have imagined unfamiliar cities 
And me among them, I shall never stand 
Beneath your pillars or your poplar groves, . . . 



THE PROSE TRADITION 135 

Images, simulacra, towns of dreams 

That never march upon each other's borders, 

And bring no comfort to each other's hearts! 

I present this passage, not because it is an example of 
Mr. Hueffer's present and no longer reminiscent style, 
but because, like much that appeared four years ago in 
Songs from London, or earlier still in From Inland, 
it hangs in my memory. And so little modern work does 
hang in one's memory, and these books created so little 
excitement when they appeared. One took them as a 
matter of course, and they are not a matter of course, 
and still less is the later work a matter of course. Oh 
well, you all remember the preface to the collected poems 
with its passage about the Shepherd's Bush exhibition, 
for it appeared first as a pair of essays in Poetry, so 
there is no need for me to speak further of Mr. Hueffer's 
aims or of his prose, or of his power to render an im- 
pression. 

There is in his work another phase that depends some- 
what upon his knowledge of instrumental music. Dante 
has defined a poem as a composition of words set to 
music, and the intelligent critic will demand that either 
the composition of words or the music shall possess a 
certain interest, or that there be some aptitude in their 
jointure together. It is true that since Dante's day — 
and indeed his day and Cassella's saw a re-beginning of 
it — ''music" and "poetry" have drifted apart, and we 
have had a third thing which is called ''word music." 
I mean we have poems which are read or even, in a 
fashion, intoned, and are ''musical" in some sort of 
complete or inclusive sense that makes it impossible or 
inadvisable to "set them to music." I mean obviously 
such poems as the First Chorus of Atalanta or many of 



136 DIVISIONS 

Mr. Yeats' lyrics. The words have a music of their own, 
and a second "musician's" music is an impertinence or 
an intrusion. 

There still remains the song to sing: to be "set to 
music," and of this sort of poem Mr. Hueffer has given 
us notable examples in his rendering of Von der Vogel- 
weide's Tandaradei and, in lighter measure, in his own 
The Three-Ten: 

When in the prime and May-day time dead lovers went 

a-walking, 
How bright the grass in lads' eyes was, how easy 

poet's talking! 
Here were green hills and daffodils, and copses to con- 
tain them: 
Daisies for floors did front their doors agog for maids 

to chain them. 
So when the ray of rising day did pierce the eastern 

heaven 
Maids did arise to make the skies seem brighter far by 

seven. 
Now here 's a street where 'bus routes meet, and 'twixt 

the wheels and paving 
Standeth a lout who doth hold out flowers not worth 

the having. 
But see, "but see! The clock strikes three above the 

Kilhurn Station, 
Those maids, thank God, are 'neath the sod and all 

their generation. 

"What she shall wear who '11 soon appear, it is not hood 

nor wimple. 
But by the powers there are no flowers so stately or so 

simple. 



THE PROSE TRADITION 137 

And paper shops and full 'bus tops confront the sun 

so brightly, 
That, come three-ten, no lovers then had hearts that 

beat so lightly 
As ours or loved more truly. 
Or found green shades or flowered glades to fit their 

loves m-ore duly. 
And see, and see! 'Tis ten past three above the Kil- 

'biirn Station, 
Those maids, thank God! are 'neath the sod and all 

their generation. 

Oh well, there are very few song writers in England, 
and it's a simple old-fashioned song with a note of fu- 
turism in its very lyric refrain; and I dare say you 
will pay as little attention to it as I did five years ago. 
And if you sing it aloud, once over, to yourself, I dare 
say you'll be just as incapable of getting it out of your 
head, which is perhaps one test of a lyric. 

It is not, however, for Mr. Hueffer's gift of song- 
WT:'iting that I have considered him at such length ; this 
gift is rare but not novel. I find him significant and 
revolutionary because of his insistance upon clarity and 
precision, upon the prose tradition; in brief, upon effi- 
cient writing — even in verse. 



THE REV. G. CRABBE, LL.B. 

"Since the death of Laurence Sterne or thereabouts, 
there has been neither in England nor America any- 
sufficient sense of the value of realism in literature, of 
the value of writing words that conform precisely with 
fact, of free speech without evasions and circumlocu- 
tions. ' ' 

I had forgotten, when I wrote this, the Rev. Crabbe, 
LL.B. 

Think of the slobber that "Wordsworth would have 
made over the illegitimate infant whom Crabbe dismisses 
with: "There smiles your Bride, there sprawls your new- 
horn Son/^ 

Byron liked him, but the British Public did not. The 
British public liked, has liked, likes and always will 
like all art, music, poetry, literature, glass engraving, 
sculpture, etc., in just such measure as it approaches 
the Tennysonian tone. It likes Shakespear, or at least 
accepts him in just so far as he is "Tennysonian." It 
has published the bard of Avon expurgated and even 
emended. There has never been an edition of ' ' Purified 
Tennyson." 

"It is incredible that his (Tennyson's) whole mind 
should be made up of fine sentiments, ' ' says Bagehot. Of 
course it wasn't. It was that lady-like attitude toward 
the printed page that did it — that something, that in- 
effable "something," which kept Tennyson out of his 
works. When he began to write for Vicey's ignorant 
ear, he immediately ceased to be the ' ' Tennyson so muzzy 

138 



THE REV. G. CRABBE, LL.B. 139 

that he tried to go out through the fireplace," the Tenny- 
son with the broad North accent, the old man with the 
worst manners in England (except Carlyle's), the Ten- 
nyson whom ''it kept the whole combined efforts of his 
family and his publishers to keep respectable." He be- 
came the Tate Gallery among poets. 

The afflatus which has driven great artists to blurt 
out the facts of life with directness or with cold irony, 
or with passion, and with always precision; which im- 
pels Villon to write — 

''Necessity makes men run wry, 
And hunger drives the wolf from wood " ; 

which impels Homer to show Hermes replying to 
Calypso — 

"You, a goddess, ask of me who am a god. 
Nevertheless I will tell you the truth"; 

which in contact with Turgenev builds a whole novel 
into the enforcement of some one or two speeches, so 
that we have, as the gaunt culmination, some phrase 
about the "heart of another" or the wide pardon in 
Maria Timofevna's "Nothing but death is irrevocable"; 
this urge, this impulse (or perhaps it is a different urge 
and impulse) leads Tennyson into pretty embroideries. 

He refined the metric of England, at least he im- 
proved on some of Shelley's but did not reach the 
Elizabethans. Whereas Shakespear has never been re- 
fined enough for his compatriots. The eighteenth cen- 
tury set itself to mending his metres, and the nineteenth 
to mending his morals. 

The cult of the innocuous has debouched into the 
adoration of Wordsworth. He was a silly old sheep with 



140 DIVISIONS 

a genius, an unquestionable genius, for imagisme, for a 
presentation of natural detail, wild-fowl bathing in a 
hole in the ice, etc., and this talent, or the fruits of this 
talent, he buried in a desert of bleatings. 

Blake denounced him as an atheist, but for all that 
he has been deemed so innocuous that he has become, 
if not the backbone, at least one of the ribs of British 
kultur. And Crabbe? 

The worst that should be said of him is that he still 
clings to a few of Pope 's tricks, and that he is not utterly 
free from the habit of moralizing. What is, in actuality, 
usually said of him is that he is "unpoetic," or, patroniz- 
ingly, ^ ' that you can 't call this really great poetry. ' ' 
. Pope is sometimes an excellent writer, Crabbe is never 
absolute slush, nonsense or bombast. That admission 
should satisfy the multitudinous reader, but it will not. 

If the nineteenth century had built itself on Crabbe? 
Ah, if ! But no ; they wanted confections. 

Crabbe has no variety of metric, but he shows no in- 
considerable skill in the use of his one habitual metre, 
to save the same from monotony. 

I admit that he makes vague generalities about 
"Vice," ''Villainy and Crime," etc., but these para- 
graphs are hardly more than short cuts between one 
passage of poetry and another. 

He does not bore you, he does not disgust you, he 
does not bring on that feeling of nausea which we have 
when we realize that we are listening to an idiot who 
occasionally makes beautiful (or ornamental) verses. 

Browning at his best went on with Crabbe 's method. 
He expressed an adoration of Shelley, and he might 
have learned more from Crabbe, but he was nevertheless 
the soundest of all the Victorians. Crabbe will perhaps 
keep better than Browning, he will have a savour of 



THE REV. G. CRABBE, LL.B. Ml 

freshness; of course he is not ''the greater poet" of the 
two, but then he gives us such sound satisfaction in his 
best moments. And those moments are precisely the 
moments when he draws his ''Borough" with greatest 
exactness, and when he refrains from commenting. They 
are the moments "when he lets himself go," when he is 
neither "The Rev." nor the "LL.B." but just good, 
sensible Crabbe, as at the end of "Inns," or reporting 
conversations in "Amusements," "Blaney," "Clelia," 
and the people remembered by "Benbow." If Eng- 
lishmen had known how to select the best out of Crabbe 
they would have less need of consulting French stylists. 
Et pourtant — 

"Then liv'd the good Squire Asgill— what a change 
Has Death and Fashion shown us at the Grange? 
He bravely thought it best became his rank, 
That all his Tenants and his Tradesmen drank ; 
' He was delighted from his favorite Room 
To see them 'cross the Park go daily home, 
Praising aloud the Liquor and the Host, 
And striving who should venerate him most. 

Along his valleys in the Evening-Hours 
The Borough-Damsels stray 'd to gather Flowers, 
Or by the Brakes and Brushwood of the Park 
To take their pleasant rambles in the dark. 

Some Prudes, of rigid kind, forebore to call 
On the kind Females — Favorites at the Hall; 
But better natures saw, with much delight, 
The different orders of mankind unite ; 
'Twas schooling Pride to see the Footman wait. 
Smile on his sister and receive her plate. 



142 DIVISIONS 

Or Sir Denys admitting Clelia to the alms-house — 

''With all her faults/' he said, "the woman knew 
How to distinguish — had a manner too; 
And, as they say, she is allied to some 
In decent station — let the creature come." 

Oh, well! Byron enjoyed him. And the people liked 
Byron. They liked him for being "romantic." They 
adored Mrs. Hemans. And some day when Arthur's 
tomb is no longer an object for metrical research, and 
when the Albert Memorial is no longer regilded, Crabbe's 
people will still remain vivid. People will read Miss 
Austen because of her knowledge of the human heart, 
and not solely for her refinement. 

His, Crabbe's, realism is not the hurried realism of 
ignorance, he describes an inn called "The Boar"; in 
his day there was no "Maison Tellier" to serve for a 
paradigm : 

"There dwells a kind old aunt, and there you'll see 
Some kind young nieces in her company: 

What though it may some cool observers strike, 
That such fair sisters should be so unlike; 
And still another and another comes. 
And at the Matron 's table smiles and blooms ; 

A pious friend who with the ancient Dame 
At sober cribbage takes an Evening-Game ; 
His cup beside him, through their play he quaffs 

Or growing serious to the Text resorts. 

And from the Sunday-Sermon makes reports, ..." 



ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 

I HAVE seen the God Pan and it was in this manner: 
I heard a bewildering and pervasive music moving from 
precision to precision within itself. Then I heard a 
different music, hollow and laughing. Then I looked 
up and saw two eyes like the eyes of a wood-creature 
peering at me over a brown tube of wood. Then some- 
one said : Yes, once I was playing a fiddle in the forest 
and I walked into a wasp 's nest. 

Comparing these things with what I can read of the 
earliest and best authenticated appearances of Pan, I 
can but conclude that they relate to similar occurrences. 
It is true that I found myself later in a room covered 
with pictures of what we now call ancient instruments, 
and that when I picked up the brown tube of wood I 
found that it had ivory rings upon it. And no proper 
reed has ivory rings on it, by nature. Also, they told 
me it was a '' recorder," whatever that is. 

Our only measure of truth is, however, our own per- 
ception of truth. The undeniable tradition of meta- 
morphoses teaches us that things do not remain always 
the same. They become other things by swift and un- 
analysable process. It was only when men began to 
mistrust the myths and to tell nasty lies about the Gods 
for a moral purpose that these matters became hope- 
lessly confused. Then some unpleasing Semite or Parsee 
or Syrian began to use myths for social propaganda, 
when the myth was degraded into an allegory or a 
fable, and that was the beginning of the end. And the 

143 



144 DIVISIONS 

Gods no longer walked in men's gardens. The first 
myths arose when a man walked sheer into ''nonsense," 
that is to say, when some very vivid and undeniable 
adventure befell him, and he told someone else who 
called him a liar. Thereupon, after bitter experience, 
perceiving that no one could understand what he meant 
when he said that he "turned into a tree," he made a 
myth — a work of art that is — an impersonal or objective 
story woven out of his own emotion, as the nearest 
equation that he was capable of putting into words. 
That story, perhaps, then gave rise to a weaker copy 
of his emotion in others, until there arose a cult, a com- 
pany of people who could understand each other's non- 
sense about the gods. 

These things were afterwards incorporated for the 
condemnable ''good of the State," and what was once 
a species of truth became only lies and propaganda. 
And they told horrid tales to little boys in order to make 
them be good; or to the ignorant populace in order to 
preserve the empire; and religion came to an end and 
civic science began to be studied. Plato said that 
artists ought to be kept out of the ideal republic, and 
the artists swore by their gods that nothing would drag 
them into it. That is the history of "civilisation," or 
philology, or Kultur. 

When any man is able, by a pattern of notes or by 
an arrangement of planes or colours, to throw us back 
into the age of truth, everyone who has been cast back 
into that age of truth for one instant gives honour to 
the spell which has worked, to the witch-work or the art- 
work, or to whatever you like to call it. I say, there- 
fore, that I saw and heard the God Pan; shortly after- 
wards I saw and heard Mr. Dolmetsch. Mr. Dolmetsch 
was talking volubly, and he said something very deroga- 



ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 145 

tory to music, which needs 240 (or some such number 
of) players, and can only be performed in one or two 
capitals. Pepys writes, that in the Fire of London, 
when the people were escaping by boat on the Thames, 
there was scarcely a boat in which you would not see 
them taking a pair of virginals as among their dearest 
possessions. 

Older journalists tell me it is ''cold mutton," that 
Mr, Dolmetseh was heard of fifteen years ago. This 
shows a tendency that I have before remarked in a civ- 
ilisation which rests upon journalism, and which has 
only a sporadic care for the arts. Everyone in London 
over forty "has heard of" Mr. Dolmetseh, his instru- 
ments, etc. The generation under thirty may have 
heard of him, but you cannot be sure of it. His topical 
interest is over. I have heard of Mr. Dolmetseh for 
fifteen years, because I am a crank and am interested 
in such matters. Mr. Dolmetseh has always been in 
France or America, or somewhere I wasn 't when he was. 
Also, I have seen broken-down spinets in portentous 
and pretentious drawing-rooms. I have heard harpsi- 
chords played in Parisian concerts, and they sounded 
like the scratching of multitudinous hens, and I did not 
wonder that pianos had superseded them. Also, I have 
known good musicians and have favoured divers sorts 
of good music. And I have supposed that clavichords 
were things you might own if you were a millionaire; 
and that virginals went with citherns and citoles in the 
poems of the late D. G. Rossetti. 

So I had two sets of adventures. First, I perceived a 
sound which is undoubtedly derived from the Gods, and 
then I found myself in a reconstructed century — in a 
century of music, back before Mozart or Purcell, listen- 
ing to clear music, to tones clear as brown amber. And 



146 DIVISIONS 

this music came indifferently out of the harpsichord or 
the clavichord or out of virginals or out of odd-shaped 
viols, or whatever they may be. There were two small 
girls playing upon them with an exquisite precision; 
with a precision quite unlike anything I have ever heard 
from an orchestra. Then someone said in a tone of 
authority: ''It is nonsense to teach people scales. It 
is rubbish to make them play this (tum, tum, tum, tum 
tum). They must begin to play music. Three years 
playing scales, that is what they tell you. How can 
they ever be musicians?" 

It reduces itself to about this. Once people played 
music. It was gracious, exquisite music, and it was 
played on instruments which gave out the players' 
exact mood and personality. "It is beautiful even if 
you play it wrong." The clavichord has the beauty of 
three or four lutes played together. It has more than 
that, but no matter. You have your fingers always en 
rapport with the strings; it is not one dab and then 
either another dab or else nothing, as with the piano; 
the music is always lying on your own finger-tips. 

This old music was not theatrical. You played it 
yourself as you read a book of precision. A few people 
played it together. It was not an interruption but a 
concentration. 

Now, on the other hand, I remember a healthy con- 
cert pianist complaining that you couldn 't ' ' really give ' ' 
a big piano concert unless you had the endurance of an 
ox; and that "women couldn't, of course"; and that 
gradually the person with long hands was being elimi- 
nated from the pianistic world, and that only people 
with little, short fat fingers could come up to the techni- 
cal requirements. Whether this is so or not, we have 
come to the pianola. And one or two people are going 



ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 147 

in for sheer pianola. They cut their rolls for the pianola 
itself, and make it play as if with two dozen fingers when 
necessary. That is, perhaps, better art than making a 
pianola imitate the music of two hands of five fingers 
each. But still something is lacking. 

Oriental music is under debate. We say we "can't 
hear it." Impressionism has reduced us to such a 
dough-like state of receptivity that we have ceased to 
like concentration. Or if it has not done this it has at 
least set a fashion of passivity that has held since the 
romantic movement. The old music was fit for the old 
instruments. That was natural. It is proper to play 
piano music on pianos. But in the end we find that 
nothing less than a full orchestra will satisfy our mod- 
ernity. 

That is the whole flaw of impressionist or "emo- 
tional" music as opposed to pattern music. It is like 
a drug; you must have more drug, and more noise each 
time, or this effect, this impression which works from the 
outside, in from the nerves and sensorium upon the 
self — is no use, its effect is constantly weaker and 
weaker. I do not mean that Bach is not emotional, but 
the early music starts with the mystery of pattern; if 
you like, with the vortex of pattern; with something 
which is, first of all, music, and which is capable of 
being, after that, many things. What I call emotional, 
or impressionist music, starts with being emotion or im- 
pression and then becomes only approximately music. 
It is, that is to say, something in the terms of something 
else. If it produces an effect, if, from sounding as 
music, it moves at all, it can only recede into the orig- 
inal emotion or impression. Programme music is merely 
a weaker, more flabby and descriptive sort of impression- 
ist music, needing, perhaps, a guide and explanation. 



148 DIVISIONS 

Mr. Dolmetsch was, let us say, enamoured of ancient 
music. He found it misunderstood. He saw a beauty 
so great and so various that he stopped composing. 
He found that the beauty was untranslatable with mod- 
em instruments; he has repaired and has entirely re- 
made '^ ancient instruments." The comfort is that he 
has done this not for a few rich faddists, as one had 
been led to suppose. He makes his virginals and clavi- 
chords for the price of a bad, of a very bad piano. You 
can have a virginal for £25 if you order it when he is 
making a dozen; and you can have a clavichord for a 
few pounds more, even if he is not making more than 
one. 

My interest in these things is not topical. Mr. Dol- 
metsch was a topic some years ago, but you are not 
au courant, and you do not much care for music unless 
you know that a certain sort of very beautiful music 
is no longer impossible. It is not necessary to wait 
for a great legacy, or to inhabit a capital city in order 
to hear magical voices, in order to hear perfect music 
which does not depend upon your Ability to approxi- 
mate the pianola, or upon great physical strength. Of 
the clavichord, one can only say, very inexactly, that it 
is to the piano what the violin is to the bass viol. 

As I believe that Lewis and Picasso are capable of 
revitalising the instinct of design so I believe that a re- 
turn, an awakening to the possibilities, not necessarily 
of ''Old" music, but of pattern music played upon an- 
cient instruments, is, perhaps, able to make music again 
a part of life, not merely a part of theatricals. The 
musician, the performing musician as distinct from the 
composer, might again be an interesting person, an 
artist, not merely a sort of manual saltimbanque or a 
stage hypnotist. It is, perhaps, a question of whether 



ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 149 

* 

you want music, or whether you want to see an obsessed 
personality trying to ' ' dominate ' ' an audience. 

I have said little that can be called technical criticism. 
I have perhaps implied it. There is precision in the 
making of ancient instruments. Men still make pass- 
able violins ; I do not see why the art of beautiful-keyed 
instruments need be regarded as utterly lost. There has 
been precision in Mr. Dolmetsch's study of ancient texts 
and notation ; he has routed out many errors.^ He has 
even, with certain help, unravelled the precision of an- 
cient dancing. He has found a complete notation which 
might not interest us were it not that this very dancing 
forces one to a greater precision with the old music. 
One finds, for instance, that certain tunes called dance 
tunes must be played double the time at which they 
are modernly taken. 

One art interprets the other. It would almost touch 
upon theatricals, which I am trying to avoid, if I should 
say that one steps into a past era when one sees all the 
other Dolmetsches dancing quaint, ancient steps of Six- 
teenth Century dancing. One feels that the dance would 
go on even if there were no audience. That is where 
real drama begins, and where we leave what I have called, 
with odium, ''theatricals." It is a dance, danced for 
the dance's sake, not a display. It is music that exists 
for the sake of being music, not for the sake of, as they 
say, producing an impression. 

Of course there are other musicians working with 
this same ideal. I take Mr. Dolmetsch as perhaps a 
unique figure, as perhaps the one man who knows most 
definitely whither he is going, and why, and who has 
given most time to old music. 

iVide his "The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth 
and XVIIIth Centuries." 



150 DIVISIONS 

They tell me ''everyone knows Dolmetsch who knows 
of old music, but not many people know of it. ' ' Is that 
sheer nonsense, or what is the fragment of truth or 
rumour upon which it is based? Why is it that the 
fine things always seem to go on in a corner? Is it a 
judgment on democracy ? Is it that what has once been 
the pleasure of the many, of the pre-Cromwellian many, 
has been permanently swept out of life? Musical Eng- 
land? A wild man comes into my room and talks of 
piles of turquoises in a boat, a sort of shop-house-boat 
east of Cashmere. His talk is full of the colour of the 
Orient. Then I find he is living over an old-clothes shop 
in Bow. "And there they seem to play all sorts of 
instruments. ' ' 

Is there a popular instinct for an}i:hing different from 
what my ex-landlord calls "the four-hour-touch"? Is 
it that the aristocracy, which ought to set the fashion, 
is too weakened and too unreal to perform the due 
functions of "aristocracy"? Is it that nature can, in 
fact, only produce a certain number of vortices? That 
the quattrocento shines out because the vortices of so- 
cial power coincided with the vortices of creative in- 
telligence? And that when these vortices do not coin- 
cide we have an age of ' ' art in strange comers ' ' and of 
great dullness among the quite rich? Is it that real 
democracy can only exist under feudal conditions, when 
no man fears to recognise creative skill in his neigh- 
bour? 



VERS LIBRE AND ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 

Poetry is a composition of words set to music. Most 
other definitions of it are indefensible, or metaphysical. 
The proportion or quality of the music may, and does, 
vary ; but poetry withers and ' ' dries out ' ' when it leaves 
music, or at least an imagined music, too far behind it. 
The horrors of modern "readings of poetry" are due 
to oratorical recitation. Poetry must be read as music 
and not as oratory. I do not mean that the words 
should be jumbled together and made indistinct and 
unrecognizable in a sort of onomatopoeic paste. I have 
found few save musicians who pay the least attention 
to the poet's own music. They are often, I admit, un- 
critical of his verbal excellence or deficit, ignorant of 
his "literary" value or bathos. But the literary qual- 
ities are not the whole of our art. 

Poets who are not interested in music are, or become, 
bad poets. I would almost say that poets should never 
be too long out of touch with musicians. Poets who 
will not study music are defective. I do not mean that 
they need become virtuosi, or that they need necessarily 
undergo the musical curriculum of their time. It is 
perhaps their value that they can be a little refractory 
and heretical, for all arts tend to decline into the stereo- 
type; and at all times the mediocre tend' or try, semi- 
consciously or unconsciously, to obscure the fact that the 
day's fashion is not the immutable. 

Music and poetry, melody and versification, alike fall 
under the marasmus. 

151 



152 DIVISIONS 

It is too late to prevent vers libre. But conceivably, 
one might improve it, and one might stop at least a little 
of the idiotic and narrow discussion based on an igno- 
rance of music. Bigoted attack, born of this ignorance 
of the tradition of music, was what we had to live 
through. 



Arnold Dolmetsch's book, ''The Interpretation of the 
Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries," ^ is full 
of what we may call either "ripe wisdom" or "common 
sense," or "those things which all good artists at all 
times have tried (perhaps vainly) to hammer into in- 
sensitive heads. ' ' Some of his dicta are, by their nature, 
applicable only to instrumental music or melody, others 
are susceptible of a sort of transposition into terms of 
the sister arts, still others have a direct bearing on poetry, 
or at least on versification. It is with these last that I 
shall concern myself. Dolmetsch's style is so clear and 
his citations of old authors so apt that I had perhaps 
better quote with small comment. 

Mace, "Musick's Monument" (1613) : 

(1) 
. . . you must Know, That, ahhough in our First Under- 
takings, we ought to strive, for the most Exact Habit of Time- 
keeping that possibly we can attain unto, (and for several 
good Reasons) yet, when we come to be Blasters, so that we 
can command all manner of Time, at our own Pleasures; we 
Then take Liberty, (and very often, for Humour, and good 
Adornment-sake, in certain Places) to Break Time; sometimes 
Faster, and sometimes Slower, as we perceive the Nature of 
the Thing Requires, which often adds, much Grace, and Luster, 
to the Performance." 

1 (Novello, London, 10s. 6d.; H. W. Gray and Co., New York.) 



VERS LIBRE AND ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 153 

(2) 

... the thing to be done, is but only to make a kind of 
Cessation, or standing still ... in due place an excellent 
grace. 

Again, from Mace, p. 130: ''// you find it u7iiform, 
and retortive either in its bars or strains" you are told 
to get variety by the quality of loud and soft, etc., 
and "if it expresseth short sentences" this applies. 
And you are to make pauses on long notes at the end 
of sentences. 

Rousseau, 1687, in ''Maitre de Musique et de Viole": 

(1) 

... At this word "movement" there are people who imagine 
that to give the movement is to follow and keep time; but 
there is much difference between the one and the other, for 
one may keep time without entering into the movement. 

(2) 

. . . You must avoid a profusion of divisions, which only 
disturb the tune, and obscure its beauty. 

(3) 

... Mark not the beat too much. 

The accompanist is told to imitate the irregularities of 
the beautiful voice. 

Frangois Couperin, 1717, "L'Art de toucher le 
Clavecin": 

(1) 

. . . We write differently from what Ave play. 

(2) 

... I find that we confuse Time, or Measure, with what is 
called Cadence or Movement. Measure defines the quantity 



154 DIVISIONS 

and equality of beats; Cadence is properly the spirit, the soul 
that must be added. 

(3) 
. . . Although these Preludes are written in measured time, 
there is however a customary style which should be followed. 
. . . Those who will use these set Preludes must play them in 
an easy manner, without binding themselves to strict 
TIME, unless I should have expressly marked it by the word 



One need seek no further for proof of the recognition 
of vers libre in music — and this during the ''classical 
period. ' ' 

I have pointed out elsewhere that the even bar meas- 
ure is certainly not the one and important thing, or even 
the first important thing ; and that European musicians, 
at least, did not begin to record it until comparatively 
late in the history of notation. Couperin later notes the 
barring as a convenience : 

. . . One of the reasons why I have measured these Preludes 
is the facility one will find to teach them or learn them. 

That is to say, musical bars are a sort of scaffold to be 
kicked away when no longer needed. 

Disregard of bars is not to be confused with tempo 
ruhato, affecting the notes inside a single bar. 

Dolmetsch's wisdom is not confined to the demon- 
stration of a single point of topical interest to the 
poet. I have not space to quote two whole chapters, 
or even to elaborate brief quotations like: "You must 
bind perfectly all that you play." The serious writer 
of verse will not rest content until he has gone to the 
source. I do not wish to give the erroneous impression 



VERS LIBRE AND ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 155 

that old music was all vers libre. I state simply that 
vers libre exists in old music. Quantzens, 1752, in so 
far as he is quoted by Dolmetsch, only cautions the 
player to give the shorter notes ''inequality." Chris- 
topher Simpson, 1655, is much concerned with physical 
means of getting a regular beat. His date is interesting. 
The movement toward regularity in verse during the 
seventeenth century seems condemnable if one compare 
only Dryden and Shakespeare, but read a little bad 
Elizabethan poetry and the reason for it appears. On 
the other hand, Couperin's feeling for irregularity un- 
derlying "classical" forms may give us the clue to a 
wider unexpressed feeling for a fundamental irregu- 
larity which would have made eighteeenth-century clas- 
sicism, classicism of surface, tolerable to those who felt 
the underlying variety as strongly as the first regular- 
izers may have felt it. 

These are historical speculations. If I were writing 
merely a controversial article I should have stopped 
with the first quotations from Couperin, concerning vers 
libre. (I have never claimed that vers libre was the 
only path of salvation. I felt that it was right and that 
it had its place with the other modes. It seems that my 
instinct was not wholly heretical and that the opposition 
was rather badly informed.) Old gentlemen who talk 
about ''red riot and anarchy," "treachery to the im- 
perium of poesy," etc., etc., would do well to "get up 
their history" and peruse the codices of their laws.^ 

1 Cf . The Quarterly that hospital for the infirm and aged. 



^'DUBLINERS" AND MR. JAMES JOYCE ^ 

Freedom from sloppiness is so rare in contemporary 
English prose that one might well say simply, ''Mr. 
Joyce's book of short stories is prose free from sloppi- 
ness," and leave the intelligent reader ready to run 
from his study, immediately to spend three and sixpence 
on the volume. 

Unfortunately one's credit as a critic is insufficient to 
produce this result. 

The readers of The Egoist, having had Mr. Joyce 
under their eyes for some months, will scarcely need to 
have his qualities pointed out to them. Both they and 
the paper have been very fortunate in his collaboration. 

Mr. Joyce writes a clear hard prose. He deals with 
subjective things, but he presents them with such clarity 
of outline that he might be dealing with locomotives 
or with builders' specifications. For that reason one 
can read Mr. Joyce without feeling that one is con- 
ferring a favour. I must put this thing my own way. I 
know about 168 authors. About once a year I read 
something contemporary without feeling that I am 
softening the path for poor Jones or poor Fulano de Tal. 

I can lay down a good piece of French writing and 
pick up a piece of writing by Mr. Joyce without feeling 
as if my head were being stuffed through a cushion. 
There are still impressionists about and I dare say they 
claim Mr. Joyce. I admire impressionist writers. Eng- 

1 "Dubliners," by James Joyce. Grant Kichards. 

156 



''DUBLINERS" AND MR. JAMES JOYCE 157 

lish prose writers who haven 't got as far as impression- 
ism (that is to say, 95 per cent, of English writers of 
prose and verse) are a bore. 

Impressionism has, however, two meanings, or per- 
haps I had better say, the word ' ' impressionism ' ' gives 
two different ''impressions." 

There is a school of prose writers, and of verse writers 
for that matter, whose forerunner was Stendhal and 
whose founder was Flaubert. The followers of Flaubert 
deal in exact presentation. They are often so intent on 
exact presentation that they neglect intensity, selection, 
and concentration. They are perhaps the most clarify- 
ing and they have been perhaps the most beneficial force 
in modern writing. 

There is another set, mostly of verse writers, who 
founded themselves not upon anybody's writing but 
upon the pictures of Monet. Every movement in paint- 
ing picks up a few writers who try to imitate in words 
what someone has done in paint. Thus one writer saw 
a picture by Monet and talked of "pink pigs blossom- 
ing on a hillside," and a later writer talked of ''slate- 
blue" hair and "raspberry-coloured flanks." 

These "impressionists" who write in imitation of 
Monet's softness instead of writing in imitation of Flau- 
bert's definiteness, are a bore, a grimy, or perhaps I 
should say, a rosy, floribund bore. 

The spirit of a decade strikes properly upon all of the 
arts. There are "parallel movements." Their causes 
and their effects may not seem, superficially, similar. 

This mimicking of painting ten or twenty years late, 
is not in the least the same as the "literary movement" 
parallel to the painting movement imitated. 

The force that leads a poet to leave out a moral 
reflection may lead a painter to leave out representation. 



158 DIVISIONS 

The resultant poem may not suggest the resultant paint- 
ing. 

Mr. Joyce's merit, I will not say his chief merit but 
his most engaging merit, is that he carefully avoids tell- 
ing you a lot that you don 't want to know. He presents 
his people swiftly and vividly, he does not sentimentalise 
over them, he does not weave convolutions. He is a 
realist. He does not believe ''life" would be all right 
if we stopped vivisection or if we instituted a new sort 
of ''economics." He gives the thing as it is. He is not 
bound by the tiresome convention that any part of life, 
to be interesting, must be shaped into the conventional 
form of a "story." Since De Maupassant we have had 
so many people trying to write "stories" and so few 
people presenting life. Life for the most part does not 
happen in neat little diagrams and nothing is more tire- 
some than the continual pretence that it does. 

Mr. Joyce's "Araby," for instance, is much better 
than a "story," it is a vivid waiting. 

It is surprising that Mr. Joyce is Irish. One is so 
tired of the Irish or "Celtic" imagination (or "phan- 
tasy" as I think they now call it) flopping about. Mr. 
Joyce does not flop about. He defines. He is not an 
institution for the promotion of Irish peasant industries. 
He accepts an international standard of prose writing 
and lives up to it. 

He gives us Dublin as it presumably is. He does not 
descend to farce. He does not rely upon Dickensian 
caricature. He gives us things as they are, not only for 
Dublin, but for every city. Erase the local names and 
a few specifically local allusions, and a few historic 
events of the past, and substitute a few different local 
names, allusions and events, and these stories could be 
retold of any town. 



^'DUBLINERS" AND MR. JAMES JOYCE 159 

That is to say, the author is quite capable of dealing 
with things about him, and dealing directly, yet these 
details do not engross him, he is capable of getting at 
the universal element beneath them. 

The main situations of "Madame Bovary" or of 
' ' Doiia Perf ecta ' ' do not depend on local colour or upon 
local detail, that is their strength. Good writing, good 
presentation can be specificalty local, but it must not 
depend on locality. Mr. Joyce does not present "types" 
but individuals. I mean he deals with common emo- 
tions which run through all races. He does not bank on 
"Irish character." Roughly speaking, Irish literature 
has gone through three phases in our time, the shamrock 
period, the dove-grey period, and the Kiltartan period. 
I think there is a new phase in the works of Mr. Joyce. 
He writes as a contemporary of continental writers. I 
do not mean that he writes as a faddist, mad for the 
last note, he does not imitate Strindberg, for instance, 
or Bang. He is not ploughing the underworld for hor- 
ror. He is not presenting a macabre subjectivity. 
He is classic in that he deals with normal things 
and with normal people. A committee room. Little 
Chandler, a nonentity, a boarding house full of 
clerks — these are his subjects and he treats them all 
in such a manner that they are worthy subjects of 
art. 

Francis Jammes, Charles Vildrac and D. H. Lawrence 
have written short narratives in verse, trying, it would 
seem, to present situations as clearly as prose writers 
have done, yet more briefly. Mr. Joyce is engaged in a 
similar condensation. He has kept to prose not needing 
the privilege supposedly accorded to verse to justify his 
method. 

I think that he excels most of the impressionist writers 



160 DIVISIONS 

because of his more rigorous selection, because of his 
exclusion of all unnecessary detail. 

There is a very clear demarcation between unneces- 
sary detail and irrelevant detail. An impressionist 
friend of mine talks to me a good deal about "prepar- 
ing effects," and on that score he justifies much unneces- 
sary detail, which is not ''irrelevant," but which ends 
by being wearisome and by putting one out of conceit 
with his narrative. 

Mr. Joyce's more rigorous selection of the presented 
detail marks him, I think, as belonging to my own 
generation, that is, to the "nineteen-tens," not to the 
decade between "the 'nineties" and to-day. 

At any rate these stories and the novel now appearing 
in serial form are such as to win for Mr. Joyce a very 
definite place among English contemporary prose writ- 
ers, not merely a place in the "Novels of the Week" 
column, and our writers of good clear prose are so few 
that we cannot afford to confuse or to overlook them. 



MEDITATIONS 



ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN PRINTED IN ENGLAND 

Thoughts, rages, phenomena. I have seen in the 
course of the morning new ecclesiastical buildings, and 
I know from the events of the last few months that it is 
very difficult to get the two most remarkable novels, 
written in English by our generation, published 
"through the ordinary channels." 

Yet it is more desirable that a nation should have 
a firm literature than that paste-board nonentities should 
pour forth rehashed Victoriana on Sundays. Waste! 
Waste, and again, multiplicitly, waste ! 

Christian and benevolent reader, I am not attack- 
ing your religion. I am even willing to confess a very 
considerable respect for its founder, and for Confucius 
and Mohammed, or any other individual who has striven 
to implant a germ of intelligence in the soil of the cir- 
cumjacent stupidity. And I respect him whatever his 
means and his medium, that is, say, whether he has 
worked by violent speech, or by suave and persuasive 
paragraphs, or by pretending to have received his in- 
structions, and gazed unabashed upon the hind side 
of the intemperate and sensuous J'h'v, on the escarps 
of Mount Sinai. 

Because we, that is to say, you and I and the hy- 
pothetical rest of our readers, in normal mood, have 

1 Egoist. March 1st, 1916. 

161 



162 DIVISIONS 

no concern with churches, we generally presume that 
all this pother has been settled long since, and that no- 
body bothers about it. It is indeed a rare thought that 
there are thousands of prim, soaped little Tertullians 
opposing enlightenment, entrenched in their bigotry, 
mildly, placidly, contentedly entrenched in small livings 
and in fat livings, and in miserable, degrading curacies, 
and that they are all sterile, save perhaps in the pro- 
duction of human offspring, whereof there is already a 
superabundance. 

Perhaps 10 per cent, of the activities of the Christian 
churches are not wholly venal, 7nais passons! And the 
arts, and good letters, serious writing? 

' ' Oh, you go on too much about art and letters ! ' ' 

"Bleat about the importance of art!!!" Yes, I have 
heard these phrases. And very annoying people will 
'*go on about" art. 

"In no country in the world do the authorities take 
such good care of their authors." There are various 
points of view. There are various tyrannies. 

"We are going to have an outbreak of rampant puri- 
tanism after the war." 

' ' We shall have a Saturnalia ! ' ' 

There are various points of view. The monster of 
intolerance sniffs like a ghoul about the battlefields even. 
Flammarion or someone said that the sun was about to 
explode on, I think it was, February the fifth of this 
year. The end of the world is approaching. Perhaps. 

At any rate I am not the first author to remark that 
the future is unknowable, or at least indefinite and un- 
certain. Concerning the past we know a little. Con- 
cerning "progress," how much? 

It is about thirty-nine years since Edmond de Gon- 
court wrote the preface I quote. 



MEDITATIONS 163 

Thirteen years ago my brother and I wrote in an introduc- 
tion to "Germinie Laeerteux" : 

"Now that the novel is wider and deeper, now that it begins 
to be the serious, passionate, living great-form of literary 
study and of social research, now that it has become, by 
analysis and psychological inquiry, the history of contem- 
porary ethics-in-action (how shall one render accurately the 
phrase Thistoire morale contemporaine"?), now that the novel 
has imposed upon itself the studies and duties of science, one 
may again make a stand for its liberties and its privileges." 

There ends his quotation of what they had set down 
in ''the forties." 

Now in one's normal mood, in one's normal existence, 
one takes it for granted that De Goncourt's statement is 
simple, concise, and accurate. One does not meet peo- 
ple who hold any other view, and one goes on placidly 
supposing that the question is settled, that it is settled 
along with Galileo's quondam heresy. 

If a man has not in the year of grace 1915 or 1916 
arrived at this point of enlightenment carefully marked 
by the brothers De Goncourt in a. d. 1863, he is not 
admitted to the acquaintance of anyone worth knowing. 
I do not say that a person holding a different view would 
be physically kicked downstairs if he produced a differ- 
ent opinion in an intelligent company ; our manners are 
softened; he would be excreted in some more spiritual 
manner. 

In December, 1876, Edmond de Goncourt added, among 
others, the following sentences: 

In 1877 I come alone and perhaps for the last time to de- 
mand these privileges for this new book written with the same 
feeling of intellectual curiosity and of commiseration for 
human sufferings. 

It has been impossible, at times, not to speak as a physician ^ 



164 DIVISIONS 

as a savant, as a historian. It would be insulting (injurieux) 
to us, the young and serious school of modem novelists, to 
forbid us to think, to analyse, to describe all that is permitted 
to others to put into a volume which has on its cover ''Study," 
or any other grave title. You cannot ask us at this time of 
day to amuse the young lady in the rail-road carriage. I 
think we have acquired, since the beginning of the century, 
the right to write for formed men, without the depressing 
necessity of fleeing to foreign presses, or to have, under a full 
republican regime, our publishers in Holland, as we did in 
the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV. 

Well, there you have it. We were most of us un- 
born, or at least mewling and puking, when those per- 
fectly plain, simple and, one would have supposed, obvi- 
ous sentences were put together. 

And yet we are still faced with the problem: Is 
literature possible in England and America? Is it pos- 
sible that the great book and the firm book can appear 
*'in normal conditions"? That is to say, under the 
same conditions that make musical comedy, Edna 
What 's-her-name, Victoria Cross, Clement Shorter, etc., 
etc., so infernally possible among us! 

It seems most unlikely. Of course, five hundred peo- 
ple can do any mortal thing they like, provided it does 
not imply the coercion of a large body of different peo- 
ple. I mean, for instance, five hundred people can have 
any sort of drama or novel or literature that they like. 

It is possible that the Mercure de France has done 
much to make serious literature possible in prance 
''under present conditions." The Yale University 
Press in America claims that it selects its books solely 
on their merit and regardless of public opinion (or per- 
haps I am wrong, ' ' regardless of their vendibility ' ' may 
be the meaning of their phrase as I remember it). 



MEDITATIONS 165 

And England? 

*'0h, Blink is afraid to face the Libraries, I thought 
so." ''The Censor," etc., etc. ''We don't think it 
necessary to superintend the morals of our subscribers," 
"You can have it by taking a double subscription." 

Let me say at once that I make no plea for smutti- 
ness, for an unnecessary erotic glamour, etc., etc. I 
have what I have been recently informed is a typically 
"French" disgust at the coarseness of Milton's mind. 
I have more than once been ridiculed for my prudery. 

But if one can't, parfois, write "as a physician, as a 
savant, as a historian," if we can't write plays, novels, 
poems or any other conceivable form of literature with 
the scientist's freedom and privilege, with at least the 
chance of at least the scientist's verity, then where in 
the world have we got to, and what is the use of any- 
thing, anything? 



TROUBADOURS: THEIR SORTS AND CONDI- 
TIONS ^ 

The argument whether or no the troubadours are a 
subject worthy of study is an old and respectable one. 
It is far too old and respectable to be decided hastily or 
by one not infallible person. If Guillaume, Count of 
Peiteus, grandfather of King Richard Coeur de Lion, had 
not been a man of many energies, there might have been 
little food for this discussion. He was, as the old book 
says of him, ''of the greatest counts in the world, and 
he had his way with women." Beside this he made 
songs for either them or himself or for his more ribald 
companions. They say also that his wife was Countess 
of Dia, ' ' fair lady and righteous, ' ' who fell in love with 
Raimbaut d 'Aurenga and made him many a song. How- 
ever that may be. Count Guillaume made composition in 
verse the best of court fashions, and gave it a social 
prestige which it held till the accursed crusade of 1208 
against the Albigenses. The mirth of Provencal song 
is at times anything but sunburnt, and the mood is often 
anything but idle. For example De Born advises the 
barons to pawn their castles before making war, thus 
if they won they could redeem them, if they lost the 
loss fell on the holder of the mortgage. 

The forms of the poetry are highly artificial, and as 
artifice they have still for the serious craftsman an in- 
terest, less indeed than they had for Dante, but by no 
means inconsiderable. No student of the period can 
doubt that the involved forms, and especially the veiled 

1 The Quarterly Review, 1913. 

166 



TROUBADOURS 167 

meanings in the ''trobar clus," grew out of living con- 
ditions, and that these songs played a very real part in 
love intrigue and in the intrigue preceding warfare. 
The time had no press and no theatre. If you wish to 
make love to women in public, and out loud, you must 
resort to subterfuge; and Guillaume St. Leider even 
went so far as to get the husband of his lady to do the 
seductive singing. 

If a man of our time be so crotchety as to wish emo- 
tional, as well as intellectual, acquaintance with an age 
so out of fashion as the 12th century, he may try in 
several ways to attain it. He may read the songs them- 
selves from the old books — from the illuminated vellum 
— and he will learn what the troubadours meant to the 
folk of the century just after their own. He will learn 
a little about their costume from the illuminated capi- 
tals. Or he may try listening to the words with the 
music, for, thanks to Jean Beck and others,^ it is now 
possible to hear the old tunes. They are perhaps a lit- 
tle Oriental in feeling, and it is likely that the spirit 
of Sufism is not wholly absent from their content. Or, 
again, a man may walk the hill-roads and river roads 
from Limoges and Charente to Dordogne and Narbonne 
and learn a little, or more than a little, of what the 
country meant to the wandering singers. He may 
learn, or think he learns, why so many canzos open with 
speech of the weather ; or wh^^ such a man made war on 
such and such castles. Once more, he may learn the 
outlines of these events from the '^razzos," or prose 
paragraphs of introduction, which are sometimes called 
"lives of the troubadours." And, if he have mind for 
these latter, he will find in the Bibliotheque Nationale 

1 Walter Morse Rummers "Neuf Chansons de Troubadours," 
pub. Augener, ltd., etc.; also the settings by Aubry. 



168 DIVISIONS 

at Paris the manuscript of Miquel de la Tour, written, 
perhaps, in the author's own handwriting; at least we 
read ' ' I Miquel de la Tour, scryven, do ye to wit. ' ' 

Miquel gives us to know that such and such ladies 
were courted or loved or sung with greater or less good 
fortune by such and such minstrels of various degree, 
for one man was a poor vavassour, and another was King 
Amfos of Aragon; and another, Vidal, was son of a 
furrier, and sang better than any man in the world ; and 
another was a poor knight that had but part of a castle ; 
and another was a clerk,^ and he had an understanding 
with a horgesa who had no mind to love him or to keep 
him, and who became mistress to the Count of Rodez. 
''Voila I'estat divers d'entre eulx," 

There was indeed a difference of estate and fortune 
between them. The monk, Gaubertz de Poicebot, ''was 
a man of birth ; he was of the bishopric of Limozin, son 
of the castellan of Poicebot. And he was made monk 
when he was a child in a monastery, which is called Sain 
Leonart. And he knew well letters, and well to sing, 
and well trobar."^ And for desire of woman he went 
forth from the monastery. And he came thence to the 
man to whom came all who for courtesy wished honour 
and good deeds — to Sir Savaric de Malleon — and this 
man gave him the harness of a joglar and a horse and 
clothing ; and then he went through the courts and com- 
posed and made good canzos. And he set his heart 
upon a donzella gentle and fair and made his songs of 
her, and she did not wish to love him unless he should get 
himself made a knight and take her to wife. And he 
told En Savaric how the girl had refused him, where- 
fore En Savaric made him a knight and gave him land 

1 Raimon de Miraval and Uc Brunecs respectively. 

2 Poetical composition, literally "to find." 



TROUBADOURS 169 

and the income from it. And he married the girl and 
held her in great honour. And it happened that he 
went into Spain, leaving her behind him. And a knight 
out of England set his mind upon her and did so much 
and said so much that he led her with him, and he kept 
her long time his mistress and then let her go to the 
dogs {malamen anar). And En Gaubertz returned 
from Spain, and lodged himself one night in the city 
where she was. And he went out for desire of woman, 
and he entered the alherc of a poor woman; for they 
told him there was a fine woman within. And he found 
his wife. And when he saw her, and she him, great 
was the grief between them and great shame. And he 
stopped the night with her, and on the morrow he went 
forth with her and took her to a nunnery where he had 
her enter. And for this grief he ceased to sing and to 
compose." If you are minded, as Browning was m his 
''One Word More," you may search out the song that 
En Gaubertz made, riding down the second time from 
Malleon, flushed with the unexpected knighthood. 

' ' Per amor del belh temps suau 
E quar fin amor men somo. ' ' ^ 

''For love of the sweet time and soft" he beseeches this 
"lady in whom joy and worth have shut themselves and 
all good in its completeness" to give him grace and the 
kisses due to him a year since. And he ends in envoi to 
Savaric. 

' ' Senher savaric larc e bo 
Vos troba hom tota fazo 

1 "For love of the fair time and soft, 

And because fine love calleth me to it." 



170 DIVISIONS 

Quel vostre ric fag son prezan 
El dig cortes e benestan." ^ 

La Tour has given us seed of drama in the passage 
above rendered. He has left us also an epic in his 
straightforward prose. "Piere de Maensac was of Al- 
verne (Auvergne) a poor knight, and he had a brother 
named Austors de Maensac, and they both were trouba- 
dours and they both were in concord that one should 
take the castle and the other the trohar/' And pre- 
sumably they tossed up a marahotin or some such obso- 
lete coin, for we read, ''And the castle went to Austors 
and the poetry to Piere, and he sang of the wife of 
Bemart de Tierci. So much he sang of her and so much 
he honoured her that it befell that the lady let herself 
go {furar a del). And he took her to the castle of the 
Dalfin of Auvergne, and the husband, in the manner of 
the golden Menelaus, demanded her much, with the 
church to back him and with the great war that they 
made. But the Dalfin maintained him (Piere) so that 
he never gave her up. He (Piere) was a straight man 
{dreitz om) and good company, and he made charming 
songs, tunes and the words, and good coblas of pleas- 
ure.'' And among them is one beginning 

''Longa saison ai estat vas amor 
Humils e francs, y ai f aich son coman. ' ' ^ 

Dante and Browning have created so much interest in 
Sordello that it may not be amiss to give the brief ac- 

1 "Milord Savaric, generous 

To thy last bond, men find thee thus, 
That thy rich acts are food for praise 
And courtly are thy words and days." 
2 "For a long time have I stood toward Love 

Humble and frank, and have done his commands." 



TROUBADOURS 171 

count of him as it stands in a manuscript in the Ambro- 
sian library at Milan. "Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana. 
Sordello was of Mantuan territory of Sirier (this would 
hardly seem to be Goito), son of a poor cavalier who had 
name Sier Escort (Browning's El Corte), and he de- 
lighted himself in chancons, to learn and to make them. 
And he mingled with the good men of the court. And 
he learned all that he could and he made coblas and 
sirventes. And he came thence to the court of the 
Count of St. Bonifaci, and the Count honoured him 
much. And he fell in love with the wife of the Count, 
in the form of pleasure {a forma de solatz), and she 
with him. (The Palma of Browning's poem and the 
Cunizza of Dante's.) And it befell that the Count 
stood ill with her brothers. And thus he estranged him- 
self from her, and from Sier Sceillme and Sier Albrics. 
Thus her brothers caused her to be stolen from the 
Count by Sier Sordello and the latter came to stop with 
them. And he (Sordello) stayed a long time with them 
in great happiness, and then he went into Proenssa 
where he received great honours from all the good men 
and from the Count and from the Countess who gave 
him a good castle and a wife of gentle birth." ^ (Brown- 
ing with perfect right alters this ending to suit his own 
purpose.) 

The luck of the troubadours was as different as their 
ranks, and they were drawn from all social orders. We 
are led away far indeed from polite and polished society 
when we come to take note of that Gringoire, Guillem 
Figiera, "son of a tailor; and he was a tailor; and when 
the French got hold of Toulouse he departed into Lom- 
bardy. And he knew well trohar and to sing, and he 
made himself joglar among the townsfolk (ciutadins). 
He was not a man who knew how to carry himself 



172 DIVISIONS 

among the barons or among the better class, but much 
he got himself welcomed among harlots and slatterns 
and by inn-keepers and taverners. And if he saw com- 
ing a good man of the court, there where he was, he was 
sorry and grieved at it, and he nearly split himself to 
take him down a peg {et ades percussava de lui ahais- 
sar).'' 

For one razzo that shows an unusual character there 
are a dozen that say simply that such or such a man was 
of Manes, or of Cataloigna by Rossilon, or of elsewhere, 
' ' a poor cavalier. ' ' ^ They made their way by favour 
at times, or by singing, or by some other form of utility. 
Ademar of Gauvedan ''was of the castle Marvois, son 
of a poor knight. He was knighted by the lord of Mar- 
vois. He was a brave man but could not keep up his 
estate as knight, and he became jongleur and was re- 
spected by all the best people. And later he went into 
orders at Gran Mon." Elias Cairels ''was of Sarlat; 
ill he sang, ill he composed, ill he played the fiddle and 
worse he spoke, but he was good at writing out words 
and tunes. And he was a long time wandering, and 
when he quitted it, he returned to Sarlat and died 
there." Perdigo was the son of a fisherman and made 
his fortune by his art. Peirol was a poor knight who 
was fitted out by the Dalfin of Auvergne and made love 
to Sail de Claustra; and all we know of Cercamon is 
that he made vers and pastorelas in the old way and 
that "he went everywhere he could get to." Pistoleta 
"was a singer for Arnaut of Marvoil, and later he took 
to trohar and made songs with pleasing tunes and he 
was well received by the best people, although a man 
of little comfort and of poor endowment and of little 

1 For example, Peire Bermon and Palazol. 



TROUBADOURS 173 

stamina. And he took a wife at Marseilles and became 
a merchant and became rich and ceased going about the 
courts." Guillems the skinny was a joglar of Manes, 
and the capital letter shows him throwing 3, 5, and 4, 
on a red dice board. "Never had he on harness, and 
what he gained he lost ynalamen, to the taverns and the 
women. And he ended in a hospital in Spain." 

The razzos have in them the seeds of literary criti- 
cism. The speech is, however, laconic. Aimar lo Ners 
was a gentleman. "He made such songs as he knew 
how to." Aimeric de Sarlat, a joglar, became a trou- 
badour, "and yet he made but one song." Piere Guil- 
lem of Toulouse "Made good coblas, but he made too 
many." Daude of Pradas made cansos "per sen de 
trobar," which I think we may translate "from a men- 
tal grasp of the craft." "But they did not move from 
love, wherefore they had not favour among folk. They 
were not sung." We find also that the labour and skill 
were divided. One man played the viol most excel- 
lently, and another sang, and another spoke his songs 
to music,^ and another, Jauf re Rudel, Brebezieu 's father- 
in-law, made "good tunes with poor words to go with 
them." 

The troubadour's person comes in for as much free 
criticism as his performance. Elias fons Salada was 
"a fair man verily, as to feature, a joglar, no good trou- 
badour." ^ But Faidit, a joglar of Uzerche, "was ex- 
ceedingly greedy both to drink and to eat, and he be- 
came fat beyond measure. And he took to wife a pub- 
lic woman; very fair and well taught she was, but she 

1 Richard of Brebezieu (disia sons). 

2 The "joglar" was the player and singer, the "troubadour" the 
"finder" or composer of songs and words. 



174 DIVISIONS 

became as big and fat as he was. And she was from a 
rich town Alest of the Mark of Provenca from the 
seignory of En Bernart d'Andussa." 

One of the noblest figures of the time, if we are to 
believe the chronicle, was Savaric de Mauleon, a rich 
baron of Peitieu, whom I have mentioned above, son of 
Sir Reios de Malleon; ''lord was he of Malleon and of 
Talarnom and of Fontenai, and of castle Aillon and of 
Boet and of Benaon and of St. Miquel en Letz and of the 
isle of Ners and of the isle of Mues and of Nestrine and of 
Engollius and of many other good places." As one may 
read in the continuation of this notice and verify from 
the razzos of the other troubadours, ' ' he was of the most 
open-handed men in the world. ' ' He seems to have left 
little verse save the tenzon with Faidit. 

"Behold divers estate between them all!" Yet, de- 
spite the difference in conditions of life between the 12th 
century and our own, these few citations should be 
enough to prove that the people were much the same, 
and if the preceding notes do not do this, there is one 
tale left that should succeed. 

"The Vicomte of St. Antoni was of the bishopric of 
Caortz (Cahors), Lord and Vicomte of St. Antoni; and 
he loved a noble lady who was wife of the seignor of 
Pena Dalbeges, of a rich castle and a strong. The lady 
was gentle and fair and valiant and highly prized and 
much honoured; and he very valiant and well trained 
and good at arms and charming, and a good trobaire, 
and had name Eaimons Jordans; and the lady was 
called the Vicontesse de Pena ; and the love of these two 
was beyond all measure. And it befell that the Vis- 
count went into a land of his enemies and was grievous 
wounded, so that report held him for dead. And at 
the news she in great grief went and gave candles at 



TROUBADOURS 175 

church for his recovery. And he recovered. And at 
this news also she had great grief. ' ' And she fell a-mop- 
ing, and that was the end of the affair with St. Antoni, 
and "thus was there more than one in deep distress." 
''Wherefore" Elis of Montfort, wife of William a-Gor- 
don, daughter of the Viscount of Trozena, the glass of 
fashion and the mould of form, the pride of ''youth, 
beauty, courtesy," and presumably of justice, mercy, 
long-suffering, and so forth, made him overtures, and 
successfully. And the rest is a matter much as usual. 

If humanity was much the same, it is equally certain 
that individuals were not any more like one another; 
and this may be better shown in the uncommunicative 
canzoni than in the razzos. Thus we have a pastoral 
from the sensitive and little known Joios of Tolosa: 

"Lautrier el dous temps de pascor 
En una ribeira," 

which runs thus : 

"The other day, in the sweet time of Easter, I went 
across a flat land of rivers hunting for new flowers, walk- 
ing by the side of the path, and for delight in the green- 
ness of things and because of the complete good faith and 
love which I bear for her who inspires me, I felt a melt- 
ing about my heart and at the first flower I found, I 
burst into tears. 

"And I wept until, in a shady place, my eyes fell 
upon a shepherdess. Fresh was her colour, and she was 
white as a snow-drift, and she had doves ' eyes, ' ' 

and the rest of it. 

In very different key we find the sardonic Count of 



176 DIVISIONS 

Foix, in a song which begins mildly enough for a spring 
song: 

''Mas qui a flor si vol mesclar," 

and turns swiftly enough to a livelier measure : 

*'Ben deu gardar lo sieu baston 
Car frances sabon grans colps dar 
Et albirar ab lor bordon 
E nous fizes in carcasses 
Ni en genes ni en gascon. ' ' 

''Let no man lounge amid the flowers 
Without a stout club of some kind. 
Know ye the French are stiff in stours 
And sing not all they have in mind, 
So trust ye not in Carcason, 
In Genovese, nor in Gascon." 

My purpose in all this is to suggest to the casual 
reader that the Middle Ages did not exist in tapestry 
alone, nor in the 14th century romances, but that there 
was a life like our own, no mere sequence of citherns and 
citoles, nor a continuous stalking about in sendal and 
diaspre. Men were pressed for money. There was un- 
speakable boredom in the castles. The chivalric singing 
was devised to lighten the boredom ; and this very sing- 
ing became itself in due time, in the manner of all 
things, an ennui. 

There has been so much written about the poetry of 
the best Provencal period, to wit the end of the 12th 
century, that I shall say nothing of it here, but shall 
confine the latter part of this essay to a mention of 



TROUBADOURS 177 

three efforts, or three sorts of effort which were made to 
keep poetry alive after the crusade of 1208. 

Any study of European poetry is unsound if it does 
not commence with a study of that art in Provence. 
The art of quantitative verse had been lost. This loss 
was due more to ignorance than to actual changes of 
language, from Latin, that is, into the younger tongues. 
It is open to doubt whether the ^olic singing was ever 
comprehended fully even in Rome. When men began 
to write on tablets and ceased singing to the harhitos, 
a loss of some sort was unavoidable. Propertius may be 
cited as an exception, but Propertius writes only one 
metre. In any case the classic culture of the Renais- 
sance was grafted on to medieval culture, a process 
which is excellently illustrated by Andreas Divus lusti- 
nopolitanus' translation of the Odyssey into Latin. It 
is true that each century after the Renaissance hag tried 
in its own way to come nearer the classic, but, if we are 
to understand that part of our civilisation which is the 
art of verse, we must begin at the root, and that root is 
medieval. The poetic art of Provence paved the way 
for the poetic art of Tuscany; and to this Dante bears 
sufficient witness in his treatise "De Vulgari Eloquio." 
The heritage of art is one thing to the public and quite 
another to the succeeding artists. The artist's in- 
heritance from other artists can be little more than 
certain enthusiasms, which usually spoil his first work; 
and a definite knowledge of the modes of expression, 
which knowledge contributes to perfecting his more 
mature performance. All this is a matter of technique. 

After the compositions of Vidal and of Rudel and of 
Ventadour, of Bornelh and Bertrans de Born and Arnaut 
Daniel, there seemed little chance of doing distinctive 
work in the ''canzon de I'amour courtois." There was 



178 DIVISIONS 

no way, or at least there was no man in Provence capable 
of finding a new way of saying in seven closely rhymed 
strophes that a certain girl, matron or widow was like a 
certain set of things, and that the troubadour's virtues 
were like another set, and that all this was very sorrow- 
ful or otherwise, and that there was but one obvious 
remedy. Richard of Brebezieu had done his best for 
tired ears ; he had made similes of beasts and of the stars 
which got him a passing favour. He had compared 
himself to the fallen elephant and to the self-piercing 
pelican, and no one could go any further. Novelty is 
reasonably rare even in modes of decadence and revival. 
The three devices tried for poetic restoration in the early 
13th century were the three usual devices. Certain men 
turned to talking art and esthetics and attempted to 
dress up the folk-song. Certain men tried to make verse 
more engaging by stuffing it with an intellectual and 
argumentative content. Certain men turned to social 
satire. Roughly, we may divide the interesting work of 
the later Provencal period into these three divisions. As 
all of these men had progeny in Tuscany, they are, from 
the historical point of view, worth a few moments' at- 
tention. 

The first school is best represented in the work of 
Giraut Riquier of Narbonne. His most notable feat was 
the revival of the Pastorela. The Pastorela is a poem in 
which a knight tells of having met with a shepherdess or 
some woman of that class, and of what fortune and con- 
versation befell him. The form had been used long be- 
fore by Marcabrun, and is familiar to us in such poems 
as Guido Cavalcanti's "In un boschetto trovai pas- 
torella," or in Swinburne's "An Interlude." Guido, 
who did all things well, whenever the fancy took him, 



TROUBADOURS 179 

has raised this form to a surpassing excellence in his 
poem ''Era in pensier d'Amor, quand' io trovai." 
Riquier is most amusing in his account of the inn-mis- 
tress at Sant Pos de Tomeiras, but even there he is less 
amusing than was Marcabrun when he sang of the shep- 
herdess in "L'autrier iost' una sebissa." Riquier has, 
however, his place in the apostolic succession; and there 
is no reason why Cavalcanti and Riquier should not 
have met while the former was on his journey to Campo- 
stella, although Riquier may as easily have been in 
Spain at the time. At any rate the Florentine noble 
would have heard the pastorelas of Giraut; and this 
may have set him to his hallate, which seem to date 
from the time of his meeting with Mandetta in Toulouse. 
Or it may have done nothing of the kind. The only 
more or less settled fact is that Riquier was then the 
best-known living troubadour and near the end of his 
course. 

The second, and to us the dullest of the schools, set to 
explaining the nature of love and its effects. The nor- 
mal modern will probably slake all his curiosity for this 
sort of work in reading one such poem as the King of 
Navarre's "De Fine amour vient science e beautez." 
"Ingenium nobis ipsa puella facit," as Propertius put 
it, or anglice : 

"Knowledge and beauty from true love are wrought, 
And likewise love is born from this same pair ; 
These three are one to whoso hath true thought," etc. 

There might be less strain if one sang it. This peculiar 
variety of flame was carried to the altars of Bologna, 
whence Guinicello sang: 



180 DIVISIONS 

''Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore, 
Come Taugello in selva alia verdura.'' 

And Cavalcanti wrote: "A lady asks me, wherefore I 
wish to speak of an accident ^ which is often crnel. ' ' 
Upon this poem there are nineteen great and learned 
commentaries. And Dante, following in his elders' foot- 
steps, has burdened us with a "Convito." 

The third school is the school of satire, and is the only- 
one which gives us a contact with the normal life of the 
time. There had been Provengal satire before Piere 
Cardinal ; but the sirventes of Sordello and de Born were 
directed for the most part against persons, while the 
Canon of Clermont drives rather against conditions. In 
so far as Dante is critic of morals, Cardinal must be held 
as his forerunner. IMiquel writes of him as follows : 

'^Peire Cardinal was of Veillac of the city Pui Ma 
Donna, and he was of honourable lineage, son of a knight 
and a lady. And when he was little his father put him 
for canon in the caiionica major of Pui; and he learnt 
letters, and he knew well how to read and to sing; and 
when he was come to man's estate he had high knowl- 
edge of the vanity of this world, for he felt himself gay 
and fair and young. And he made many fair argu- 
ments and fair songs. And he made cansos, but he 
made only a few of these, and sirventes; and he did 
best in the said sirventes where he set forth many fine 
arguments and fair examples for those who understand 
them ; for much he rebuked the folly of this world and 
much he reproved the false clerks, as his sirventes show. 
And he went through the courts of kings and of noble 

1 Accidente, used as a purely technical term of his scholastic 
philosophy. 



TROUBADOURS 181 

barons and took with him his joglar who sang the sir- 
ventes. And much was he honoured and welcomed by 
my lord the good king of Aragon and by honourable 
barons. And I, master Miquel de la Tour, escruian 
(scribe), do ye to wit that N. Peire Cardinal when he 
passed from this life was nearly a hundred. And I, 
the aforesaid Miquel, have written these sirventes in the 
city of Nemze (Nimes) and here are written some of his 
sirventes. ' ' 

If the Vicontesse de Pena reminds us of certain ladies 
with whom we have met, these sirventes of Cardinal may 
well remind us that thoughtful men have in every age 
found almost the same set of things or at least the same 
sort of things to protest against; if it be not a corrupt 
press or some monopoly, it is always some sort of equiva- 
lent, some conspiracy of ignorance and interest. And 
thus he says, "Li clerc si fan pastor." The clerks pre- 
tend to be shepherds, but they are wolfish at heart. 

If he can find a straight man, it is truly matter for 
song ; and so we hear him say of the Duke of Narbonne, 
who was, apparently, making a fight for honest adminis- 
tration : 

"Coms raymon due de Narbona 
Marques de proensa 
Vostra valors es tan bona 
Que tot lo mon gensa, 
Quar de la mar de bayona 
En tro a valenca 
Agra gent falsae fellona 
Lai ab vil temensa, 
Mas vos tenetz vil lor 
Q'n f ranees bevedor 



182 DIVISIONS 

Plus qua ^ perditz austor 
No vos fan temensa. ' ' ^ 

Cardinal is not content to spend himself in mere 
abuse, like the little tailor Figeira, who rhymes Christ's 
''mortal pena" with 

''Car voletz totzjors portar la borsa plena," 

which is one way of saying, "Judas!" to the priests. 
He, Cardinal, sees that the technique of honesty is not 
always utterly simple. 

"Li postilh, legat elh cardinal 
Fa cordon tug, y an fag establir 
Que qui nos pot de traisson esdir," 

which may mean, "The pope and the legate and the 
cardinal have twisted such a cord that they have brought 
things to such a pass that no one can escape committing 
treachery. ' ' As for the rich : 

1 Here lies the difficulty of all this sort of scholarship ! Is this 
"qua" or "que"? The change of the letter will shift us into irony. 

2 "Now is come from France what one did not ask for" — he is 
addressing the man who is standing against the North — 

"Count Raymon, Duke of Narbonne, 
Marquis of Provence, 
Your valour is sound enough 
To make up for the cowardice of 
All the rest of the gentry. 
For from the sea at Bayonne, 
Even to Valence, 

Folk would have given in (sold out), 
But you hold them in scorn, 
[Or, reading Taur,' 'scorn the gold.'] 
So that the drunken French 
Alarm you no more 
Than a partridge frightens a hawk." 



TROUBADOURS 183 

''Li ric home an pietat tan gran 
Del autre gen quon ac caym da bel 
Que mais volon tolre q lop no fan 
E mais mentir que tozas de bordelh. ' ' ^ 

Of the clergy, ''A tantas vey baylia," "So much the 
more do I see clerks coming into power that all the 
world will be theirs, whoever objects. For they'll have 
it with taking or with giving" (i.e. by granting land, 
belonging to one man, to someone else who will pay 
allegiance for it, as in the case of De Montfort), ''or 
with pardon or with hypocrisy; or by assault or by 
drinking and eating; or by prayers or by praising the 
worse ; or with God or with devilry. ' ' We find him put- 
ting the age-long query about profit in the following. 

"He may have enough harness 
And sorrel horses and bays; 
Tower, wall, and palace, 
May he have 
— The rich man denying his God. ' ' 

The stanza runs very smoothly to the end 

"Si mortz no fos 
Elh valgra per un cen. ' ' ^ 

The modern Provencal enthusiast who is in raptures 
at the idea of chivalric love (a term which he usually 

1 "The rich men have such pity 
For other folk — about as much as Cain had for Abel. 
For they would like to leave less than the wolves do, 
And to lie more than girls in a brothel." 

2 "A hundred men he would be worth 
Were there no death." 



184 DIVISIONS 

misunderstands), and who is little concerned with the 
art of verse, has often failed to notice how finely the 
sound of Cardinal's poems is matched with their mean- 
ing. There is a lash and sting in his timbre and in his 
movement. Yet the old man is not always bitter; or, 
if he is bitter, it is with the bitterness of a torn heart 
and not of a hard one. It is so we find him in the sir- 
vente beginning: 

*'As a man weepeth for his son or for his father, 
Or for his friend when death has taken him. 
So do I mourn for the living who do their own ill, 
False, disloyal, felon, and full of ill-fare. 
Deceitful, breakers-of-pact, 
Cowards, complainers. 

Highwaymen, thieves-by-stealth, turn-coats, 
Betrayers, and full of treachery, 
Here where the devil reigns 

And teaches them to act thus. ' ' 

He is almost the only singer of his time to protest 
against the follies of war. As here : 

"Ready for war, as night is to follow the sun, 
Readier for it than is the fool to be cuckold 
When he has first plagued his wife ! 
And war is an ill thing to look upon. 
And I know that there is not one man drawn into it 
But his child, or his cousin or someone akin to him 
Prays God that it be given over. ' ' 

He says plainly, in another place, that the barons make 
war for their own profit, regardless of the peasants. 
"Fai mal senher vas los sieu." His sobriety is not to 



TROUBADOURS 185 

be fooled with sentiment either martial or otherwise. 
There is in him little of the fashion of feminolatry, and 
the gentle reader in search of trunk-hose and the light 
guitar had better go elsewhere. As for women : ' ' L 'una 
fai drut." 

* * One turns leman for the sake of great possessions ; . 
And another because poverty is killing her, 
And one hasn 't even a shift of coarse linen ; 
And another has two and does likewise. 
And one gets an old man — and she is a young wench, 
And the old woman gives the man an elixir. ' ' 

As for justice, there is little now: "If a rich man 
steal by chicanery, he will have right before Constan- 
tine (i.e. by legal circumambience), but the poor thief 
may go hang. ' ' And after this there is a passage of pity 
and of irony fine-drawn as much of his work is, for he 
keeps the very formula that De Born had used in his 
praise of battle, ''Belh mes quan vey"; and, perhaps, 
in Sir Bertrans' time even the Provencal wars may have 
seemed more like a game, and may have appeared to 
have some element of sport and chance in them. But 
the 12th century had gone, and the spirit of the people 
was weary, and the old canon's passage may well serve 
as a final epitaph on all that remained of silk thread and 
cisclatons, of viol and gai saber. 

''Never again shall we see the Easter come in so fairly. 
That was wont to come in with pleasure and with song. 
No ! but we see it arrayed with alarms and excursions. 
Arrayed with war and dismay and fear. 
Arrayed with troops and with cavalcades. 
Oh, yes, it 's a fine sight to see holder and shepherd 
Going so wretched that they know not where they are. ' ' 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 



The reactions and ''movements" of literature are 
scarcely, if ever, movements against good work or good 
custom. Dryden and the precursors of Dryden did not 
react against ''Hamlet." If the eighteenth-century 
movement toward regularity is among those least sympa- 
thetic to the public of our moment, it is "historically 
justifiable," even though the katachrestical vigours of 
Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" may not be enough to 
"explain" the existence of Pope. A single faulty work 
showing great powers w^ould hardly be enough to start 
a "reaction"; only the mediocrity of a given time can 
drive the more intelligent men of that time to "break 
with tradition." 

I take it that the phrase "break with tradition" is 
currently used to mean "desert the more obvious im- 
becilities of one 's immediate elders " ; at least, it has had 
that meaning in the periodical mouth for some years. 
Only the careful and critical mind will seek to know 
how much tradition inhered in the immediate elders. 

Vaguely in some course of literature we heard of 
"the old f ourteeners, " vulgariter, the metre of the 
"Battle of Ivry." "Hamlet" could not have been 
written in this pleasing and popular measure. The 
"classics," however, appeared in it. For Court ladies 
and cosmopolitan heroes it is perhaps a little bewilder- 
ing, but in the mouth of Oenone : 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 187 

The Heroycal Epistles of the learned Poet Publius 
Ovidius Naso. In English verse: set out and trans- 
lated by George Tubeniile. 1567. London: Henry 
Denham. 



OENONE TO PARIS 

To Paris that was once her owne 

though now it be not so, 
From Ida, Oenon greeting sendes 

as these hir letters show, 
May not thy nouel wife endure 

that thou my Pissle reade. 
That they with Grecian fist were wrought 

thou needste not stand in dreade. 

Pegasian nymph renounde in Troie, 

Oenone hight by name, 
Of thee (of thee that were mine owne), complaine 

if thou permit the same. 
What froward god doth seeke to barre 

Oenone to be thine? 
Or by what guilt have I deserude 

that Paris should decline? 
Take paciently deserude woe 

and never grutch at all : 
But undeserued wrongs will grieve 

a woman at the gall. 

Scarce were thou of so noble fame, 

as platly doth appeare : 
When I (the offspring of a floud) 

did choose the for my feere. 



188 DIVISIONS 

And thou, who now art Priams sonne 

(all reuerence layde apart) 
Were tho a Hyard to beholde 

when first thou wanste my heart. 
How oft have we in shaddow laine 

whylst hungrie flocks have fedde? 
How oft have we of grasse and greanes 

preparde a homely bedde? 
How oft on simple stacks of strawe 

and bennet did we rest? 
How oft the dew and foggie mist 

our lodging hath opprest? 
Who first discouerde thee the holtes 

and Lawndes of lurcking game? 
Who first displaid thee where the whelps 

lay sucking of their Dame? 
I sundrie tymes have holpe to pitch 

thy toyles for want of ayde: 
And forst thy Hounds to climbe the hilles 

that gladly would have stayde. 

One boysterous Beech Oenone's name 

in outward barke doth beare : 
And with thy earning knife is cut 

Oenon, every wheare. 
And as the trees in tyme doe ware 

so doth encrease my name: 
Go to, grow on, erect your selves 

helpe to aduance my fame. 

There growes (I minde it uerie well) 

upon a banck, a tree 
Whereon ther doth a fresh recorde 

and will remaine of mee, 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 189 

Live long thou happie tree, I say, 

that on the brinck doth stande ; 
And hast ingraued in thy barke 

these wordes, with Paris hande: 

When Pastor Paris shall reuolte, 

and Oenon's love forgoe: 
Then Xanthus waters shall recoyle, 

and to their Fountaines floe. 
Now Ryuer backward bend thy course, 

let Xanthus streame retier: 
For Paris hath renounst the Nymph 

and prooude himself a lier. 
That cursed day bred all my doole, 

the winter of my joy, 
With cloudes of froward fortune fraught 

procurde me this annoy; 

When cankred crafte luno came 

with Venus (Nurce of Love) 
And Pallas eke, that warlike wench, 

their beauties pride to proue. 



The pastoral note is at least not unpleasing, and the 
story more real than in the mouths of the later poets, 
who enliven us with the couplet to the tune : 

Or Paris, who, to steal that daintie piece. 
Traveled as far as 'twas 'twixt Troy and Greece. 

The old versions of Ovid are, I think, well worth a 
week or so random reading. Turning from the Heroides 
I find this in a little booklet said to be "printed abroad" 
and undated. It bears ''C. Marlow" on the title page. 



190 DIVISIONS 



AMORUM 



Now on the sea from her olde loue comes shee 
That drawes the day from heaven's cold axle-tree, 
Aurora whither slidest thou down againe, 
And byrdes from Memnon yeerly shall be slaine. 

Now in her tender arms I sweetlie bide, 

If euer, now well lies she by my side, 

The ayre is colde, and sleep is sweetest now. 

And byrdes send foorth shril notes from every bow. 

Whither runst thou, that men and women loue not, 

Holde in thy rosie horses that they moue not. 

Ere thou rise stars teach seamen where to saile. 

But when thou comest, they of their course faile. 

Poore trauailers though tired, rise at thy sight. 

The painful Hinde by thee to fild is sent. 

Slow oxen early in the yoke are pent. 

Thou cousnest boyes of sleep, and dost betray them 

To Pedants that with cruel lashes pay them. 



Any fault is more pleasing than the current fault of 
the many. One should read a few bad poets of every 
era, as one should read a little trash of every contem- 
porar}^ nation, if one would know the worth of the good 
in either. 

Turning from translations, for a moment, to The 
Shepherdess Starve (1591), for the abandonment of syn- 
tax and sense, for an interesting experiment in metric, 
for beautiful lines astray in a maze of unsense, I find 
the incoherent conclusion of much incoherence, where 

I Amorum, lib. i, elegia 13. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 191 

Amarylis says: "In the meane while let my Roundi- 
lay end my follie"; and tilts at the age old bogie of 
''Sapphics," Aeolium Carmen, which perhaps Catullus 
alone of imitators has imitated with success. 



THE SHEPHERDES STARRE, 1591 

Amaryllis. In the meane while let this my Roundilay 
end my follie: 

Sith the nymphs are thought to be happie creatures, 
For that at faier Helicon a Fountaine, 
Where all use like white Ritch iuorie foreheads 
Daily to sprinckle, 

Sith the quire of Muses atend Diana, 
Ever use to bathe heauie thoughts refyning. 
With the Silver skinne, Civet and Mir using 
For their adornment, 

Sith my sacred Nymphs priuiledge abateth, 
Cause Dianas grace did elect the Myrtle, 
To be pride of every branch in order 
last of her handmaides ; 

Should then I thus line to behold euerted 
Skies, with impure eyes in a fountaine harboured 
Where Titans honor seated is as under 
All the beholders? 

Helpe wofull Ecco, reabound relenting, 
That Dianas grace on her helpe recalling. 
May well heare thy voice to bewaile, reanswere 
Faire Amaryllis, 



192 DIVISIONS 

Fairer in deede then Galatea, fairest 
Of Dianas troope to bewitch the wisest, 
With amasing eye to abandon humors 
of any gallants, 

Shee Thetis faier, Galataea modest, 
— Albeit some say in a Chrystal often, 
Tis a rule, there lurketh a deadly poyson, 
Tis but a false rule. 

For what Yse is hid in a Diamond Ring, 
Where the wise beholder hath eyes refusing, 
AUabasters vaines to no workman hidden, 
Gold to no Touchstone. 

There bedeckes fairest Rosamond the fountaine. 
Where resorts those greene Driades the waterie 
Nimphs, of olive plants recreat by Phaehus 
Till they be maried. 

So beginning ends the report of her fame. 
Whose report passing any pennes relation, 
Doth entreat her loue, by reinspiration 
To dull heads yeelding faer eies reflection. 
Still to be present. 

Surely among poems containing a considerable amount 
of beauty, this is one of the worst ever written. Patient 
endeavour will reveal to the reader a little more coher- 
ence and syntax than is at first glance apparent, but 
from this I draw no moral conclusion. 

For all half -forgotten writing there is, to my mind, 
little criticism save selection. ' ' Those greene Driades ' ' ; 
Oenone, "offspring of a floud"; the music of the Elegy 
must make their own argument. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 193 



II 



A great age of literature is perhaps always a great 
age of translations; or follows it. The Victorians in 
lesser degree had Fitzgerald, and Swinburne's Villon, 
and Rossetti. One is at first a little surprised at the 
importance which historians of Spanish poetry give to 
Boscan, but our histories give our own translators too 
little. And worse, we have long since fallen under the 
blight of the Miltonic or noise tradition, to a stilted dia- 
lect in translating the classics, a dialect which imitates 
the idiom of the ancients rather than seeking their mean- 
ing, a state of mind which aims at ' ' teaching the boy his 
latin" or greek or whatever it may be, but has long 
since ceased to care for the beauty of the original; or 
which perhaps thinks "appreciation" obligatory, and 
the meaning and content mere accessories. 

Golding was no inconsiderable poet, and the Marlow 
of the translations has beauties no whit inferior to the 
Marlowe of original composition. In fact, the skill of 
the translations forbids one to balk at the terminal 
" e. " We conclude the identity without seeking through 
works of reference. 

Compare (pardon the professional tone whereof I 
seem unable to divest myself in discussing these mat- 
ters), compare the anonymous rather unskilled work 
in the translation of Sixe Idillia, with Marlow 's version 
of Amorum, lib. iii, 13. 



194 DIVISIONS 

The XVIII Jdillion 

HELLENS EPITHALAMION 1 

In Sparta long agoe, where Menelaus wore the crowne, 
Twelve noble Virgins, daughters to the greatest in the 

towne, 
All dight upon their haire in Crowtoe garlands fresh 

and greene, 
Danst at the chamber doore of Helena the Queene, 
What time this Menelay, the younger Sonne of Atreus, 
Did marry with this louely daughter of Prince Tyn- 

darus. 
And therewithal at cue, a wedding song they jointly 

sung, 
With such a shuffling of their feete, that all the Pallace 

rung. 



CYCLOPS TO GALATEA THE WATER-NYMPH 
IX Jdillion 



Apple, sweet, of thee, and of myself I use to sing, 

And that at midnight oft, for thee, aleavne faunes up 
I bring. 

All great with young, and foure beares whelps, I nour- 
ish up for thee. 

But come thou hither first, and thou shalt have them 
all of me. 

"i- 8ixe Idillia, published by Joseph Barnes, Oxford, 1588; 100 
copies reprinted by H, Daniel, Oxford, 1883. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 195 

And let the blewish colorde Sea beat on the shore so 

nie. 
The night with me in cave, thou shalt consume more 

pleasantlie. 
There are the shadie Bales, and there tall Cypres-trees 

doe sprout, 
And there is I vie blacke, and fertill Vines are al about. 
Coole water there I haue, distilled of the whitest snowe, 
A drinke divine, which out of wooddy Aetna mount 

doth flowe. 
In these respects, who in the Sea and wanes would 

rather be? 
But if I seem as yet, too rough and sauage unto thee. 
Great store of Oken woode I have, and never quenched 

fire; 
And I can well endure my soul to burn with thy desire, 
With this my onely eie, then which I nothing think 

more trim me. 
Now woe is me, my mother bore not me with finns to 

swimme, 
That I might dive to thee, 

The ''shuffling of their feete" is pleasing, but the 
Cyclops speaks perhaps too much in his own vein. Mar- 
low is much more dexterous. 

AMORUM 1 
Ad amicam si pecatura est, ut occulte peccat 

Seeing thou are faire, I bar not thy false playing. 
But let not me poore soule wit of thy straying. 

1 Amorum, lib. iii, elegia 13. These translations are reprinted 
in the Clarendon Press edition of Marlowe's Works, 1910. 



196 DIVISIONS 

Nor do I give thee counsaile to Hue chast 
But that thou wouldst dissemble when 'tis past. 
She hath not trod awry that doth deny it, 
Such as confesse haue lost their good names by it. 
What madness ist to tell night sports by day, 
Or hidden secrets openly to bewray, . 

The strumpet with the stranger will not do. 
Before the room be cleare, and dore put too. 
Will you make sliipwracke of your honest name 
And let the world be witnesse of the same ? 
Be more aduisde, walke as a puritaine. 
And I shall think you chast do what you can. 
Slippe still, onely deny it when tis done. 
And before people immodest speeches shun, 
The bed is for lasciuious toyings meete, 
There use all toyes, and treade shame under feete, 
When you are up and drest, be sage and graue, 
And in the bed hide all the faults you haue. 
Be not a shamed to strippe you being there. 
And mingle thighes, mine ever yours to beare, 
There in your rosie lips my tongue intomb, 
Practise a thousand sports when there you come, 
Forbare no wanton words you there would speake, 
And with your pastime let the bedsted creake. 
But with your robes, put on an honest face. 
And blush and seeme as you were full of grace. 
Deceiue all, let me erre, and think I am right 
And like a wittal, thinke thee uoide of slight. 

The reader, if he can divert his thought from matter to 
manner, may well wonder how much the eighteenth 
century authors have added, or if they added anything 
save a sort of faculty for systematization of product, a 
power to repeat certain effects regularly and at will. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 197 

But Golding's book published before all these others 
will give us more matter for reverie. One wonders, in 
reading it, how much more of the Middle Ages was 
Ovid. We know well enough that they read him and 
loved him more than the more Tennysonian Virgil. 

Yet how great was Chaucer's debt to the Doctor 
Amoris? That we will never know. Was Chaucer's 
delectable style simply the first Ovid in English? Or, 
as likely, is Golding's Ovid a mirror of Chaucer? Or 
is a fine poet ever translated until another his equal 
invents a new style in a later language? Can we, for 
our part, know our Ovid until we find him in Golding? 
Is there one of us so good at his latin, and so ready in 
imagination that Golding will not throw upon his mind 
shades and glamours inherent in the original text, which 
had for all that escaped him? Is any foreign speech 
ever our own, ever so full of beauty as our lingua ma- 
terna (whatever lingua materna that may be) ? Or is 
not a new beauty created, an old beauty doubled when 
the overchange is well done? 

Will 

. . . cum super atria velum 
Candida purpurium simulatus inficit umbras 

quite give us the "scarlet curtain" of the simile in the 
Flight from Hippomenes? Perhaps all these things 
are personal matters, and not matter for criticism or 
discussion. But it is certain that ''we" have forgotten 
our Ovid, ''we" being the reading public, the readers 
of English poetry, have forgotten our Ovid since Gold- 
ing went out of print. 



198 DIVISIONS 

METAMORPHOSIS ^ 

While in this garden Proserpine was taking hir p£is- 

time, 
In gathering eyther Violets blew, or Lillies white as 

Lime, 
And while of Maidenly desire she fillde hir Haund and 

Lap, 
Endeauoring to outgather hir companions there. By 

hap 
Dis spide her: lovde her: caught her up: and all at 

once well nere. 
So hastie, hote, and swift a thing is Loue as may 

appeare. 
The Ladie with a wailing voyce afright did often call 
Hir mother and hir waiting Maides, but Mother most 

of all. 



ATALANTA ^ 

And from the Citie of Tegea there came the Paragone 

Of Lycey forrest, Atalant, a goodly Ladie, one 

Of Schoenyes daughters, then a Maide. The garment 

she did weare 
A brayded button fastned at hir gorget. All hir heare 
Untrimmed in one only knot was trussed. From hir 

left 
Side hanging on hir shoulder was an Ivorie quiuer 

deft: 

1 Metamorphosis, by Arthur Golding, 1567. The Fyft booke. 
Reprint of 300 copies by De la More Press, in folio. 

2 Atalanta. The Eight booke. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 199 

Which being full of arrowes, made a clattering as she 

went. 
And in hir right hand she did beare a bow already 

bent. 
Hir furniture was such as this. Hir countnance and 

hir grace 
Was such as in a Boy might well be cald a Wenches 

face. 



THE HUNTING 



Assoone as that the men came there, some pitched the 
toyles, 

Some tooke the couples from the Dogs, and some pur- 
sude the f oyles 

In places where the swine had tract: desiring for to 
spie 

Their owne destruction. Now there was a hollow bot- 
tom by, 

To which the watershots of raine from all the high 
grounds drew. 

Within the compasse of this pond great store of Oys- 
ters grew: 

And Sallowes lithe, and flackring flags, and moorish 
Rushes eke, 

And lazie Eeedes on little shankes, and other baggage 
like. 

From hence the Bore was rowzed out, and fiersly forth 
he flies 

Among the thickest of his foes as thunder from the 
Skies. 



200 DIVISIONS 

FLIGHT FROM HIPPOMENES 

. . . now while Hippomenes 
Debates theis things within himself and other like to 

these, 
The Damzell ronnes as if her feete were wings. And 

though that shee 
Did fly as swift as arrow from a Turkye bo we : yit hee 
More woonded at hir beawtye than at the swiftnesse 

of her pace 
Her ronning greatly did augment her beawtye and 

her grace. 
The wynd ay whisking from her feete the labells of 

her socks 
Uppon her back as whyght as snowe did tosse her 

golden locks, 
And eke thembroydred garters that were tyde be- 

neathe her ham. 
A redness mixt with whyght uppon her tender body 

cam, 
As when a scarlet curtaine streynd ageinst a playstred 

wall 
Doth cast like shadowe, making it seeme ruddye there- 
with all. 

Reality and particularization ! The Elizabethans 
themselves began the long series of sins against them. 
In Ovid at least they are not divorced from sweeping 
imagination as in the Fasti (v. 222) : 

Unius tellus ante coloris erat; 

or in the opening of the Metamorphoses, as by Golding ; 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 201 

Which Chaos hight, a huge rude heape and nothing 

else but even 
A heavie lump and clottred clod of seedes 



Nor yet the earth amiddes the ayre did hang by won- 
drous slight 

Just peysed by hir proper weight. Nor winding in 
and out 

Did Amphitrytee with her armes embrace the earth 
about, 

For where was earth, was sea and ayre, so was the 
earth unstable. 

The ayre all darke, the sea likewise to beare a ship 
unable. 

The suttle ayre to flickering fowles and birdes he hath 
assignde. 

I throw in the last line for the quality of one adjec- 
tive, and close this section of excerpts with a bit of fun 
anent Bacchus. 



ADDRESS TO BACCHUS. IV 

Thou into Sea didst send 
The Tyrrhene shipmen. Thou with bittes the sturdy 

neckes dost bend 
Of spotted Lynxes : throngs of Fownes and Satyres on 

thee tend, 
And that old Hag that with a staff his staggering 

limmes doth stay 
Scarce able on his Asse to sit for reeling every way. 



202 DIVISIONS 

Thou comest not in any place but that is hearde the 

noyse 
Of gagling womens tatling tongues and showting out 

of boyes. 
With sound of Timbrels, Tabors, Pipes, and Brazen 

pannes and pots 
Confusedly among the rout that in thine Orgies trots. 



Ill 



The sin or error of Milton — let me leave off vague 
expressions of a personal active dislike, and make my 
yearlong diatribes more coherent. Honour where it is 
due! Milton undoubtedly built up the sonority of the 
blank verse paragraph in our language. But he did 
this at the cost of his idiom. He tried to turn English 
into latin; to use an uninflected language as if it were 
an inflected one, neglecting the genius of English, dis- 
torting its fibrous manner, making schoolboy translations 
of latin phrases: ''Him who disobeys me disobeys." 

I am leaving apart all my disgust with what he has 
to say, his asinine bigotry, his beastly hebraism, the 
coarseness of his mentality, I am dealing with a tech- 
nical matter. All this clause structure modelled on latin 
rhetoric, borrowed and thrust into sonorities which are 
sometimes most enviable. 

The sin of vague pompous words is neither his own 
sin nor original. Euphues and Gongora were before 
him. The Elizabethan audience was interested in large 
speech. "Multitudinous seas incarnadine" caused as 
much thrill as any epigram in Lady Windermere^ s Fan 
or The Importance of Being Earnest. The Dramatists 
had started this manner, Milton but continued in their 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 203 

wake, adding to their high-soundingness his passion for 
latinization, the latinization of a language peculiarly 
unfitted for his sort of latinization. Golding in the 
ninth year of Elizabeth can talk of "Charles his wane" 
in translating Ovid, but Milton 's fields are ' ' irriguous, ' ' 
and worse, and much more notably displeasing, his 
clause structure is a matter of "quem's," "cui's," and 
* ' quomodo 's. ' ' 

Another point in defence of Golding : his constant use 
of ''did go," "did say," etc., is not fustian and man- 
nerism ; it was contemporary speech, though in a present- 
day poet it is impotent affectation and definite lack of 
technique. I am not saying "Golding is a greater poet 
than Milton"; these quantitative comparisons are in 
odium. Milton is the most unpleasant of English poets, 
and he has certain definite and analysable defects. His 
unpleasantness is a matter of personal taste. His faults 
of language are subject to argument just as are the faults 
of any other poet's language. His popularity has been 
largely due to his bigotry, but there is no reason why 
that popular quality should be for ever a shield against 
criticism. His real place is nearer to Drummond of 
Hawthorneden than to "Shakespear" and "Dante" 
whereto the stupidity of our forbears tried to exalt 
him. 

His short poems are his defenders' best stronghold, 
and it will take some effort to show that they are 
better than Drummond 's Phoehus Arise. In all this I 
am not insisting on ' ' Charles his wane ' ' as the sole mode 
of translation. I point out that Golding was endeavour- 
ing to convey the sense of the original to his readers. 
He names the thing of his original author, by the name 
most germane, familiar, homely, to his hearers. He 
is intent on conveying a meaning, and not on bemusing 



204 DIVISIONS 

them with a rumble. And I hold that the real poet is 
sufficiently absorbed in his content to care more for the 
content than the rumble; and also that Chaucer and 
Golding are more like to find the mot juste (whether 
or no they held any theories there-anent) than were for 
some centuries their successors, saving the author of 
''Hamlet/' 

Beside the fustian tradition, the tradition of cliche 
phrases, copies on greek and latin clause structure 
and phrase structure, two causes have removed the 
classics from us. On one hand we have ceased to read 
greek with the aid of latin cribs, and latin is the only 
language into which any great amount of greek can be 
in a lively fashion set over; secondly, there is no dis- 
crimination in classical studies. The student is told 
that all the classics are excellent and that it is a crime 
to think about what he reads. There is no use pretend- 
ing that these literatures are read as literature. An 
apostolic succession of school teachers has become the 
medium of distribution. 

The critical faculty is discouraged, the poets are made 
an exercise, a means of teaching the language. Even 
in this there is a great deal of buncombe. It is much 
better that a man should use a crib, and know the con- 
tent of his authors than that he should be able to recite 
all the rules in Allen and Greenough's grammar. Even 
the teaching by rules is largely a hoax. The latin had 
certain case feelings. For the genitive he felt source, 
for the dative indirect action upon, for the accusative 
direct action upon, for the ablative all other periphoric 
sensation, i.e. it is less definitely or directly the source 
than the genitive, it is contributory circumstance; lump 
the locative with it, and one might call it the ''circum- 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 205 

stantial. ' ' Where it and the dative have the same form, 
we may conclude that there was simply a general indi- 
rect case. 

The humanizing influence of the classics depends more 
on a wide knowledge, a reading knowledge, than on an 
ability to write exercises in latin; it is ridiculous to 
pretend that a reading knowledge need imply more 
than a general intelligence of the minutiae of grammar. 
I am not assuming the position of those who objected 
to Erasmus's "tittle-tattles," but there is a sane order 
of importance. 

When the classics were a new beauty and ecstasy 
people cared a damn sight more about the meaning of 
the authors, and a damn sight less about their grammar 
and philology. 

We await, vei jauzen lo j or 71, the time when the student 
will be encouraged to say which poems bore him to 
tears, and which he thinks rubbish, and whether there 
is any beauty in ' ' Maecenas sprung from a line of kings. ' ' 
It is bad enough that so much of the finest poetry in the 
world should be distributed almost wholly through class- 
rooms, but if the first question to be asked were : ' ' Gen- 
tlemen, are these verses worth reading?" instead of 
"What is the mood of 'manet'?" if, in short, the pro- 
fessor were put on his mettle to find poems worth read- 
ing instead of given the facilem discensum, the shoot, 
the supine shoot, of grammatical discussion, he might 
more dig out the vital spots in his authors, and meet 
from his class a less persistent undercurrent of convic- 
tion that all latin authors are a trial. 

The uncritical scholarly attitude has so spread, that 
hardly a living man can tell you at what points the 
latin authors surpass the greek, yet the comparison of 
their differences is full of all fascinations. Because 



206 DIVISIONS 

Homer is better than Virgil, and Aeschylus, presumably, 
than Seneca, there has spread a superstition that the 
mere fact of a text being in greek makes it of necessity 
better than a text written in latin — which is buncombe. 

Ovid indubitably added and invented much which 
is not in greek, and the greeks might be hard put to 
find a better poet among themselves than is their dis- 
ciple Catullus. Is not Sappho, in comparison, a little, 
just a little Swinburnian? 

I do not state this as dogma, but one should be open 
to such speculation. 

I know that all. classic authors have been authorita- 
tively edited and printed by Teubner, and their word- 
ing ultimately settled at Leipzig, but all questions con- 
cerning ''the classics" are not definitely settled, cold- 
storaged, and shelved. 

I may have been an ensanguined fool to spend so 
much time on medieval literature, or the time so 
''wasted" may help me to read Ovid with greater in- 
sight. I may have been right or wrong to read renais- 
sance latinists, instead of follomng the professorial 
caution that "after all if one confined oneself to the 
accepted authors one was sure of reading good stuff, 
whereas there was a risk in hunting about among the 
unknown. ' ' 

I am much more grateful for the five minutes during 
which a certain lecturer emphasized young Icarus be- 
gorming himself with Daedalus' wax than for all the 
dead hours he spent in trying to make me a scholar. 

modo quas vaga moverat aura, 
Captabat plumas: fiavam modo pollice ceram 
Moliabat; lususque suo mirabile patris 
Impediabat opus. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 207 

' ' Getting in both of their ways. ' ' My plagiarism was 
from the life and not from Ovid, the difference is per- 
haps unimportant. 

Yet if after sixteen years a professor's words came 
back to one, it is perhaps important that the classics 
should be humanly, rather than philologically taught, 
even in class-rooms. A barbaric age given over to edu- 
cation agitates for their exclusion and desuetude. Edu- 
cation is an onanism of the soul. Philology will be 
ascribed to De la Sade. 

And there is perhaps more hope for the debutante who 
drawls in the last fashionable and outwearied die-away 
cadence ''Ayh! Trois Contes? That's a good buk," 
than for the connoisseur stuffed full of catalogues; able 
to date any author and enumerate all the ranges of ' ' in- 
fluences. ' ' 

IV 

Meditation after further reading during which I 
found nothino: of interest: 



Beauty is a brief gasp between one cliche and another. 
In this case, between the ' ' f ourteeners " and the rhymed 
couplet of "pentameter." 

2 

"C. M." was a poet, likewise Golding, both facts al- 
ready known to all '^ students of the period." Turbey- 
ville or Turbeuile is not a discovery. 

HoTace Vould seem to confer no boons upon his trans- 
lators. With the exception of Chapman, the early trans- 
lators of Homer seem less happy than the translators of 



208 DIVISIONS 

Ovid. Horace's Satires are, we believe, the basis of 
much eighteenth century satire. The earliest English 
version of any Horace that I have found is headed: 

*'A Medicinable Morall, that is 2 Bookes of Horace 
his Satyres, Englyshed according to the prescription of 
saint Hierome (Episto. ad Ruflin.) Quod malum est, 
muta, Quod bonum est, prode. The Wailyngs of the 
Prophet Hieremiah done into Englyshe verse also Epi- 
grammes, by T. Drant. Perused and allowed according 
to the Queen Madiesties Iniunctions, London 1566." 

The mutation of the satires is not inviting. The Ars 
Poetica opens as follows : 

A Paynter if he shoulde adioyne 

unto a womans heade 
A long maires necke and overspread 

the corpse in everye steade 
With sondry feathers of straunge huie, 

the whole proportioned so 
Without all good congruitye 

the nether parts do goe 
Into a fishe, on hye a f reshe 

Welf avord womans face : 
My frinds let in to see this sighte 

could you not laugh a pace? 

By 1625 the Miltonic cliche is already formed. It is 
perhaps not particularly Milton's. Sir T. Hawkins is 
greeted by John Beaumont, but I do not find his transla- 
tions very readable. I turn back, indeed, gratefully to 
Corinna (Amores I. 5.) in a long loose gown 

Her white neck hid with trells hanging downe 
Resembling fair Semiramis going to bed 
Or Layis of a thousand lovers spread. 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 209 
''C. M. " gets quality even in the hackneyed topic: 

What age of Varroes name shall not be told, 
And lasons Argos, and the fleece of golde, 
Lofty Lucresius shall live that houre 
That Nature shall dissolve this earthly bowre. 
Eneas warre, and Titerius shall be read 
While Rome of all the conquering world is head. 
Till Cupid's bow and fierie shafts be broken, 
Thy verses, sweete Tibullus, shal be spoken. 

As late as 1633 Saltonstall keeps some trace of good 
cadence, though it is manifestly departing. 

Now Zephyrus warmes the ayre, the yeare is runne 
And the long seeming winter now is done, 
The Ramme which bore faire Hellen once away, 
Hath made the darke night equall to the day. 
Now boyes and girles do sweet Violets get. 
Which in the country often grow unset, 
Faire coloured flowers in the Meddowes spring. 
And now the Birds their untaught notes do sing. 

(Tristia XII.) 

Turberuile in the 1567 edition of the Heroides does 
not confine himself to one measure, nor to rhyme. I 
think I have seen a mis-statement about the date of the 
earliest blank verse in English. These eight lines should 
prevent its being set too late. The movement is, to me 
at least, of interest, apart from any question of scholastic 
preciosity. 

Aemonian Laodamia sendeth health, 
And greeting to Protesilaus hir spouse: 
And wisheth it, where he soioums, to stay. 



210 DIVISIONS 

Eeport hath spread in Aulide that you lie 
In rode, by meane of fierce and froward gale. 
Ah when thou me forsookste, where was the winde, 
Then broiling seas thine Oares should have with- 
stood, 
That was a fitting time for wrathful waves. 

His Phaedra has the ' ' f ourteener " measure. 

''My pleasure is to haughtie hills 
and bushie brakes to hie: 
To pitch my hay, or with my Houndes 
to rayse a lustie crie." 

But there is an infinite monotony of fourteeners, and 
then there is an infinite plethora of rhymed ten syllable 
couplets. And they are all "exactly alike." Whether 
they translate Horace or Homer they are all exactly 
alike. Beauty is a gasp between cliches. 

For every "great age" a few poets have written a 
few beautiful lines, or found a few exquisite melodies, 
and ten thousand people have copied them, until each 
strand of music is planed down to a dulness. The Sap- 
phic stanza appears an exception, and yet, 

Greece and Alexandria may have been embedded knee- 
deep in bad Sapphics, and it is easy to turn it to ridi- 
cule, comical, thumping. 



There is a certain resonance in "Certain Bokes of 
Virgiles Aenaeis by Henry Earl of Surrey" (apud Ri- 
cardum Tottel 1557). 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 211 

They whisted all, with fixed face attent 
When prince Aeneas from the royal seat 
Thus gan to speak, Queene, it is thy will, 
I should renew a woe can not be told : 
How that the Grekes did spoile and overthrow 
The Phrygian wealth, and wailful realm of Troy, 
Those ruthful things that I myself beheld. 
And whereof no small part fel to my share. 
Which to expresse, who could refraine from teres, 
What Myrmidon, or yet what Dolopes ? 
What stern Ulysses waged soldiar ? 

And loe moist night now from the welkin falles 
And sterres declining counsel us to rest. 

Still there is hardly enough here to persuade one to re- 
read or to read The Aeneid. Besides it is ''so Mil- 
tonic." Tho. Phaer, Docteur of Phisike in 1562, pub- 
lished a version in older mould, whereof this tenebrous 
sample : 

Even in ye porche, and first in Limbo iawes done 
wailings dwell 

And Cares on couches lyen, and Settled Mindes on 
vengeans fell 

Diseases leane and pale and combrous Age of dompishe 
yeres 

As Scillas and Centaurus, man before and beast behind 

In every doore they stampe, and Lyons sad with gnash- 
ing sound 

And Bugges with hundryd heades as Briary, and 
armid round 

Chimera fightes with flames and gastly Gorgon grim 
to see, 

Eneas sodenly for feare his glistering sword out toke. 



212 DIVISIONS 

He uses inner rhyme, and alliteration apparently with- 
out any design, merely because they happen. Such 
lines as "For as at sterne I stood, and steering strongly 
held my helme" do not compare favorably with the 
relatively free Saxon fragments. But when we come 
to ''The XIII BUKES of ENEADOS of the famose 
Poete Virgin, translatet out of Latyne verses into Scot- 
tish metir by the Reverend Father in God Mayster Gawin 
Douglas Bishop of Dunkel, unkil to the Erie of Angus, 
every book having hys particular prologe (printed in 
1553^)" we have to deal with a highly different mat- 
ter. 

The battellis and the man I will discrive 
Fra Troyis boundis, first that fugitive 
By fate to Italic, came coist lauyne 
Ouer land and se, cachit with meikill pyne 
By force of goddis above, fra every stede 
Of cruel Juno, throw auld remembrit feid 
Grete payne in battelles, sufferit he also 
Or he his goddis, brocht in latio 
And belt the ciete, fra quham of nobil fame 
The latyne peopil, taken has thare name 



His commas are not punctuation, but indicate his cae- 
surae. Approaching the passage concerning the "hun- 
dryd headed Bugges" of Dr. Phaer, Douglas translates 
as follows : 

Fra thine strekis the way profound anone 
Depe unto hellis flude, of Acherone 

1 Written about 1512, i.e. early in the reign of Henry VIII, 
and bv no means "Elizabethan." 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 213 

With holebisme, and hidduous swelth unrude 
Drumly of mude, and skaldand as it war wode. 

Thir riueris and thir watteris kepit war 
Be ane Char one, ane grisly f err ear 
Terribyl of schape, and sluggard of array 
Apoun his chin feill, Chanos haris gray. 

I am inclined to think that he gets more poetry out of 
Virgil than any other translator. At least he gives one 
a clue to Dante's respect for the Mantuan. In the first 
book Aeneas with the 'Hraist Achates" is walking by 
the sea-bord: 

Amid the wod, his mother met them tuay 
Semand and made, in vissage and array 
With wappinnis, like the Virginis of spartha 
Or the stowt wensche, of trace Harpalita 
Haistand the hors, her fadder to reskewe 
Spediar than hebroun, the swift flude did persew. 
For Venus efter the gys, and maner thare 
Ane active bow, apoun her schulder bare 
As sche had bene, ane wilde huntreis 
With wind waffing, hir haris lowsit of trace. 

This is not spoiled by one's memory of Chaucer's allu- 
sion. 

''Goyng in a queynt array 

''As she hadde ben an hunteresse, 

"With wynd blowynge upon hir tresse; 

Douglas continues: 

Hir skirt kiltit, till her bare knee 

And first of other, unto them, thus speike sche. 



214 DIVISIONS 

From Aeneas answer, these lines: 

Quhidder thou be diane, phebus sister bryeht 
Or than sum goddis, of thyr Nymphyis kynd 
Maistres of woddis beis to, us happy and kynd 
Eelief our lang travell, quhat ever thow be. 

And after her prophecy: 

Vera incessu patuit dea. 

Thus sayd sche, and turned incontinent 

Hir nek schane, like unto the Rose in may 

Hir heuinly haris, glitterand bricht and gay 

Kest from her forehead, ane smell glorious and sueit 

Hir habit fell doune, covering to her feit 

And in hir passage, ane verray god did her kyith 

And fra that he knew, his moder allwith. 

But Venus with ane sop, of myst baith tway 
And with ane dirk cloud closit round about 
That na man sul tham se 



Hir self op lyft, to paphum past swyth 

To vesy her resting place, joly and blyth 

There is hir tempill, in Cipirland 

Quharin thare dois ane hundreth altaris stand 

Hait burning full of saba, sence all houris 

Ane smelland swete, with fresch garland and flouris. 

Gawine Douglas was a great poet, and Golding has 
never had due praise since his own contemporaries be- 



NOTES ON ELIZABETHAN CLASSICISTS 215 

stowed it upon him. Caxton's Virgil (1490) is a prose 
reduction of a French version. The eclogue beginning 

* ' Tityrus, happilie thou lyste, tumbling under a beech 
tree" 

is too familiar to quote here. 
The celebrated distych: 

All trauellers doo gladlie report great praise of Vlysses 
For that he knewe manie mens manners, and saw many 
citties 

is quoted by Wm. Webbe in 1586, as a perfect example 
of English quantity, and ascribed to "Master Watson, 
fellow of S. John's," forty years earlier. If Master 
Watson continued his Odyssey there is alas no further 
trace of it. 



Conclusions after this reading: 

1. The quality of translations declined in measure as 
the translators ceased to be absorbed in the subject mat- 
ter of their original. They ended in the "Miltonian" 
cliche ; in the stock and stilted phraseology of the usual 
English verse as it has come down to us. 

2. This "Miltonian" cliche is much less Milton's in- 
vention than is usually supposed. 

3. His visualization is probably better than I had 
thought. The credit due him for developing the reson- 
ance of the English blank verse paragraph is probably 
much less than most other people have until now sup- 
posed. 

4. Gawine Douglas his works, should be made acces- 
sible by reprinting. 



216 DIVISIONS 

5. This will probably be done by some dull dog, who 
will thereby receive cash and great scholastic distinc- 
tion. I however shall die in the gutter because I have 
not observed that commandment which says * ' Thou shalt 
respect the imbecilities of thine elders in order that thy 
belly shall be made fat from the jobs which lie in their 
charge. ' ' 

6. That editors, publishers, and universities loathe the 
inquisitive spirit. 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX I 
THIl SERIOUS ARTIST 1 



It is curious that one should be asked to rewrite Sid- 
ney's "Defence of Poesy" in the year of grace 1913. 
During the intervening centuries, and before them, other 
centres of civilisation had decided that good art was a 
blessing and that bad art was criminal, and they had 
spent some time and thought in trying to find means 
whereby to distinguish the true art from the sham. But 
in England now, in the age of Gosse as in the age of 
Gossen we are asked if the arts are moral. We are asked 
to define the relation of the arts to economics, we are 
asked what position the arts are to hold in the ideal 
republic. And it is obviously the opinion of many peo- 
ple less objectionable than the Sydney "Webbs that the 
arts had better not exist at all. 

I take no great pleasure in writing prose about 
aesthetic. I think one work of art is worth forty prefaces 
and as many apologise. Nevertheless I have been ques- 
tioned earnestly and by a person certainly of good will. 
It is as if one said to me : what is the use of open spaces 
in this city, what is the use of rose-trees and why do you 
wish to plant trees and lay out parks and gardens? 
There are some who do not take delight in these things. 

1 From "The Egoist," a. d. 1913. 

219 



220 APPENDIX I 

The rose springs fairest from some buried Csesar's throat 
and the dogwood with its flower of four petals (our dog- 
wood, not the tree you call by that name) is grown from 
the heart of Aucassin, or perhaps this is only fancy. 
Let us pursue the matter in ethic. 

It is obvious that ethics are based on the nature of 
man, just as it is obvious that civics are based upon 
the nature of men when living together in groups. 

It is obvious that the good of the greatest number 
cannot be attained until we know in some sort of what 
that good must consist. In other words we must know 
what sort of an animal man is, before we can contrive 
his maximum happiness, or before we can decide what 
percentage of that happiness he can have without caus- 
ing too great a percentage of unhappiness to those about 
him. 

The arts, literature, poesy, are a science, just as chem- 
istry is a science. Their subject is man, mankind and 
the individual. The subject of chemistry is matter con- 
sidered as to its composition. 

The arts give us a great percentage of the lasting and 
unassailable data regarding the nature of man, of imma- 
terial man, of man considered as a thinking and sentient 
creature. They begin where the science of medicine 
leaves off or rather they overlap that science. The bor- 
ders of the two arts overcross. 

Prom medicine we learn that man thrives best when 
duly washed, aired and sunned. From the arts we learn 
that man is whimsical, that one man differs from another. 
That men differ among themselves as leaves upon trees 
differ. That they do not resemble each other as do but- 
tons cut by machine. 

From the arts also we learn in what ways man re- 
sembles and in what way he differs from certain other 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 221 

animals. We learn that certain men are often more akin 
to certain especial animals than they are to other men 
of different composition. We learn that all men do not 
desire the same things and that it would therefore be 
inequitable to give to all men two acres and a cow. 

It would be manifestly inequitable to treat the ostrich 
and the polar bear in the same fashion, granted that it 
is not unjust to have them pent up where you can treat 
them at all. 

An ethic based on a belief that men are different 
from what they are is manifestly stupid. It is stupid 
to apply such an ethic as it is to apply laws and morals 
designed for a nomadic tribe, or for a tribe in the state 
of barbarism, to a people crowded into the slums of a 
modern metropolis. Thus in the tribe it is well to be- 
get children, for the more strong male children you have 
in the tribe the less likely you are to be bashed on the 
head by males of the neighbouring tribes, and the more 
female children the more rapidly the tribe will increase. 
Conversely it is a crime rather worse than murder to 
beget children in a slum, to beget children for whom no 
fitting provision is made, either as touching their phys- 
ical or economic wellbeing. The increase not only afflicts 
the child born but the increasing number of the poor 
keeps down the wage. On this count the bishop of 
London, as an encourager of this sort of increase, is a 
criminal of a type rather lower and rather more de- 
testable than the souteneur. 

I cite this as one example of inequity persisting be- 
cause of a continued refusal to consider a code devised 
for one state of society, in its (the code's) relation to 
a different state of society. It is as if, in physics or 
engineering, we refused to consider a force designed to 
affect one mass, in its relation (i.e. the force's) to an- 



222 APPENDIX I 

other mass wholly differing, or in some notable way dif- 
fering, from the first mass. 

As inequities can exist because of refusals to con- 
sider the actualities of a law in relation to a social 
condition, so can inequities exist through refusal to con- 
sider the actualities of the composition of the masses, or 
of the individuals to w^hich they are applied. 

If all men desired above everything else two acres 
and a cow, obviously the perfect state would be that 
state which gave to each man two acres and a cow. 

If any science save the arts were able more pre- 
cisely to determine what the individual does actually 
desire, then that science would be of more use in pro- 
viding the data for ethics. 

In like manner, if any sciences save medicine and 
chemistry were more able to determine what things were 
compatible with physical wellbeing, then those sciences 
would be of more value for providing the data of hy- 
giene. 

This brings us to the immorality of bad art. Bad 
art is inaccurate art. It is art that makes false reports. 
If a scientist falsifies a report either deliberately or 
through negligence we consider him as either a crim- 
inal or a bad scientist according to the enormity of his 
offence, and he is punished or despised accordingly. 

If he falsifies the reports of a maternity hospital in 
order to retain his position and get profit and advance- 
ment from the city board, he may escape detection. If 
he declines to make such falsification he may lose finan- 
cial rewards, and in either ease his baseness or his pluck 
may pass unknown and unnoticed save by a very few 
people. Nevertheless one does not have to argue his 
case. The layman knows soon enough on hearing it 
whether the physician is to be blamed or praised. 



THE SERIOUS AUTIST 223 

If an artist falsifies his report as to the nature of 
man, as to his own nature, as to the nature of his ideal 
of the perfect, as to the nature of his ideal of this, that 
or the other, of god, if god exist, of the life force, of 
the nature of good and evil, if good and evil exist, of the 
force with which he believes or disbelieves this, that or 
the other, of the degree in which he suffers or is made 
glad; if the artist falsifies his reports on these matters 
or on any other matter in order that he may conform 
to the taste of his time, to the proprieties of a sovereign, 
to the conveniences of a preconceived code of ethics, then 
that artist lies. If he lies out of deliberate will to lie, 
if he lies out of carelessness, out of laziness, out of cow- 
ardice, out of any sort of negligence whatsoever, he 
nevertheless lies and he should be punished or despised 
in proportion to the seriousness of his offence. His 
offence is of the same nature as the physician's and ac- 
cording to his position and the nature of his lie he is 
responsible for future oppressions and for future mis- 
conceptions. Albeit his lies are known to only a few, 
or his truth-telling to only a few. Albeit he may pass 
without censure for one and without praise for the 
other. Albeit he can only be punished on the plane of 
his crime and by nothing save the contempt of those who 
know of his crime. Perhaps it is caddishness rather 
than crime. However there is perhaps nothing worse 
for a man than to know that he is a cur and to know 
that someone else, if only one person, knows it. 

We distinguish very clearly between the physician 
who is doing his best for a patient, who is using drugs 
in which he believes, or who is in a wilderness, let us 
say, where the patient can get no other medical aid. We 
distinguish, I say, very clearly between the failure of 
such a physician, and the act of that physician, who 



224 APPENDIX I 

ignorant of the patient's disease, being in reach of more 
skilful physicians, deliberately denies an ignorance of 
which he is quite conscious, refuses to consult other 
physicians, tries to prevent the patient's having access 
to more skilful physicians, or deliberately tortures the 
patient for his own ends. 

One does not need to read black print to learn this 
ethical fact about physicians. Yet it takes a deal of 
talking to convince a layman that bad art is ''im- 
moral." And that good art however "immoral" it 
is, is wholly a thing of virtue. Purely and simply that 
good art can not be immoral. By good art I mean art 
that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most pre- 
cise. You can be wholly precise in representing a 
vagueness. You can be wholly a liar in pretending that 
the particular vagueness was precise in its outline. If 
you cannot understand this with regard to poetry, con- 
sider the matter in terms of painting. 

If you have forgotten my statement that the arts bear 
witness and define for us the inner nature and condi- 
tions of man, consider the Victory of Samothrace and 
the Taj of Agra. The man who carved the one and the 
man who designed the other may either or both of them 
have looked like an ape, or like two apes respectively. 
They may have looked like other apelike or swinelike 
men. We have the Victory and the Taj to witness 
that there was something within them differing from 
the contents of apes and of the other swinelike men. 
Thus we learn that humanity is a species or genus of 
animals capable of a variation that will produce the de- 
sire for a Taj or a Victory, and moreover capable of 
effecting that Taj or Victory in stone. We know from 
other testimony of the arts and from ourselves that the 
desire often overshoots the power of efficient presenta- 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 225 

tion; we therefore conclude that other members of the 
race may have desired to effect a Taj or a Victory. We 
even suppose that men have desired to effect more beau- 
tiful things although few of us are capable of forming 
any precise mental image of things, in their particular 
way, more beautiful than this statue or this building. 
So difficult is this that no one has yet been able to 
effect a restoration for the missing head of the Victory. 
At least no one has done so in stone, so far as I know. 
Doubtless many people have stood opposite the statue 
and made such heads in their imagination. 

As there are in medicine the art of diagnosis and the 
art of cure, so in the arts, so in the particular arts of 
poetry and of literature, there is the art of diagnosis 
and there is the art of cure. They call one the cult of 
ugliness and the other the cult of beauty. 

The cult of beauty is the hygiene, it is sun, air and 
the sea and the rain and the lake bathing. The cult of 
ugliness, Villon, Baudelaire, Corbiere, Beardsley are 
diagnosis. Flaubert is diagnosis. Satire, if we are to 
ride this metaphor to staggers, satire is surgery, inser- 
tions and amputations. 

Beauty in art reminds one what is worth while. I 
am not now speaking of shams. I mean beauty, not 
slither, not sentimentalising about beauty, not telling 
people that beauty is the proper and respectable thing. 
I mean beauty. You don't argue about an April wind, 
you feel bucked up when you meet it. You feel bucked 
up when you come on a swift moving thought in Plato 
or on a fine line in a statue. 

Even this pother about gods reminds one that some- 
thing is worth while. Satire reminds one that certain 
things are not worth while. It draws one to consider 
time wasted. 



226 APPENDIX I 

The cult of beauty and the delineation of ugliness are 
not in mutual opposition. 



I have said that the arts give us our best data for 
determining what sort of creature man is. As our 
treatment of man must be determined by our knowl- 
edge or conception of what man is, the arts provide data 
for ethics. 

These data are sound and the data of generalising 
psychologists and social theoricians are usually unsound, 
for the serious artist is scientific and the theorist is 
usually empiric in the mediaeval fashion. That is to 
say a good biologist will make a reasonable number of 
observations of any given phenomenon before he draws 
a conclusion, thus we read such phrases as ''over 1100 
cultures from the secretions of the respiratory tracts 
of over 500 patients and 30 nurses and attendants." 
The results of each observation must be precise and no 
single observation must in itself be taken as determining 
a general law, although, after experiment, certain ob- 
servations may be held as typical or normal. The seri- 
ous artist is scientific in that he presents the image of 
his desire, of his hate, of his indifference as precisely 
that, as precisely the image of his own desire, hate or 
indifference. The more precise his record the more last- 
ing and unassailable his work of art. 

The theorist, and we see this constantly illustrated 
by the English writers on sex, the theorist constantly 
proceeds as if his own case, his own limits and predi- 
lections were the tj^pical case, or even as if it were the 
universal. He is constant^ urging someone else to be- 
have as he, the theorist, would like to behave. Now art 
never asks anybody to do anything, or to think any- 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 227 

thing, or to be anything. It exists as the trees exist, 
you can admire, you can sit in the shade, you can pick 
bananas, you can cut firewood, you can do as you jolly 
well please. 

Also you are a fool to seek the kind of art you don't 
like. You are a fool to read classics because you are 
told to and not because you like them. You are a fool 
to aspire to good taste if you haven't naturally got it. 
If there is one place where it is idiotic to sham that place 
is before a work of art. Also you are a fool not to have 
an open mind, not to be eager to enjoy something you 
might enjoy but don't know how to. But it is not the 
artist's place to ask you to learn, or to defend his par- 
ticular works of art, or to insist on your reading his 
books. Any artist who wants your particular admira- 
tion is, by just so much, the less artist. 

The desire to stand on the stage, the desire of plaudits 
has nothing to do with serious art. The serious artist 
may like to stand on the stage, he may, apart from his 
art, be any kind of imbecile you like, but the two things 
are not connected, at least they are not concentric. Lots 
of people who don't even pretend to be artists have the 
same desire to be slobbered over, by people with less 
brains than they have. 

The serious artist is usually, or is often as far from 
the gegrum vulgus as is the serious scientist. Nobody 
has heard of the abstract mathematicians who worked 
out the determinants that Marconi made use of in his 
computations for the wireless telegraph. The public, 
the public so dear to the journalistic heart, is far more 
concerned with the shareholders in the Marconi com- 
pany. 

The permanent property, the property given to the 
race at large is precisely these data of the serious sci- 



228 APPENDIX I 

entist and of the serious artist ; of the scientist as touch- 
ing the relations of abstract numbers, of molecular en- 
ergy, of the composition of matter, etc. ; of the serious 
artist, as touching the nature of man, of individuals. 

Men have ceased trying to conquer the world,^ and 
to acquire universal knowledge. Men still try to pro- 
mote the ideal state. No perfect state will be founded 
on the theory, or on the working hypothesis that all men 
are alike. No science save the arts will give us the 
requisite data for learning in what ways men differ. 

The very fact that many men hate the arts is of 
value, for we are enabled by finding out what part of 
the arts they hate, to learn something of their nature. 
Usually when men say they hate the arts we find that 
they merely detest quackery and bad artists. 

In the case of a man's hating one art and not the 
others we may learn that he is of defective hearing 
or of defective intelligence. Thus an intelligent man 
may hate music or a good musician may detest very 
excellent authors. 

And all these things are very obvious. 

Among thinking and sentient people the bad artist 
is contemned as we would contemn a negligent physi- 
cian or a sloppy, inaccurate scientist, and the serious 
artist is left in peace, or even supported and encour- 
aged. In the fog and the outer darkness no measures 
are taken to distinguish between the serious and the 
unserious artist. The unserious artist being the com- 
moner brand and greatly outnumbering the serious va- 
riety, and it being to the temporary and apparent ad- 
vantage of the false artist to gain the rewards proper 
to the serious artist, it .is natural that the unserious 

1 Blind optimism, a. d. 1913. 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 229 

artist should do all in his power to obfuscate the lines 
of demarcation. 

Whenever one attempts to demonstrate the difference 
between serious and unserious work, one is told that 
''it is merely a technical discussion." It has rested at 
that — in England it has rested at that for more than 
three hundred years. The people would rather have 
patent medicines than scientific treatment. They will 
occasionally be told that art as art is not a violation of 
God's most holy laws. They will not have a specialist's 
opinion as to what art is good. They will not consider 
the "problem of style." They want "The value of art 
to life" and "Fundamental issues." 

As touching fundamental issues: The arts give us 
our data of psychology, of man as to his interiors, as 
to the ratio of his thought to his emotions, etc., etc., etc. 

The touchstone of an art is its precision. This pre- 
cision is of various and complicated sorts and only the 
specialist can determine whether certain works of art 
possess certain sorts of precision. I don't mean to say 
that any intelligent person cannot have more or less 
sound judgment as to whether a certain work of art is 
good or not. An intelligent person can usually tell 
whether or not a person is in good health. It is none 
the less true that it takes a skilful physician to make 
certain diagnoses or to discern the lurking disease be- 
neath the appearance of vigour. 

It is no more possible to give in a few pages full 
instructions for knowing a masterpiece than it would 
be to give full instructions for all medical diagnosis. 



230 APPENDIX I 



EMOTION AND POESY 

Obviously, it is not easy to be a great poet. If it 
were, many more people would have done so. At no 
period in history has the world been free of people who 
have mildly desired to be great poets and not a few 
have endeavoured conscientiously to be such. 

I am aware that adjectives of magnitude are held 
to savour of barbarism. Still there is no shame in de- 
siring to give great gifts and an enlightened criticism 
does not draw ignominious comparisons betweeen Villon 
and Dante. The so-called major poets have most of 
them given their own gift, but the peculiar term '' ma- 
jor" is rather a gift to them from Chronos. I mean that 
they have been born upon the stroke of their hour and 
that it has been given them to heap together and ar- 
range and harmonize the results of many men's labour. 
This very faculty for amalgamation is a part of their 
genius and it is, in a way, a sort of modesty, a sort of 
unselfishness. They have not wished for property. 

The men from whom Dante borrowed are remem- 
bered as much for the fact that he did borrow as for 
their own compositions. At the same time he gave of 
his own, and no mere compiler and classifier of other 
men's discoveries is given the name of ''major poet" 
for more than a season. 

If Dante had not done a deal more than borrow 
rhymes from Arnaut Daniel and theology from Aquinas 
he would not be published by Dent in the year of grace 
1913. 

We might come to believe that the thing that mat- 
ters in art is a sort of energy, something more or less 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 231 

like electricity or radio-activity, a force transfusing, 
welding, and unifying. A force rather like water when 
it spurts up through very bright sand and sets it in swift 
motion. You may make what image you like. 

I do not know that there is much use in composing 
an answer to the often asked question: What is the 
difference between poetry and prose ? 

I believe that poetry is the more highly energized. 
But these things are relative. Just as we say that a 
certain temperature is hot and another cold. In the 
same way we say that a certain prose passage "is 
poetry" meaning to praise it, and that a certain passage 
of verse is ''only prose" meaning dispraise. And at 
the same time ' ' Poetry ! ! ! " is used as a synonym for 
"Bosh! Rott!! Rubbish!!!" The thing that counts is 
"Good Writing." 

And "Good writing" is perfect control. And it is 
quite easy to control a thing that has in it no energy — 
provided that it be not too heavy and that you do not 
wish to make it move. 

And, as all the words that one would use in writing 
about these things are the vague words of daily speech, 
it is nearly impossible to write with scientific preciseness 
about "prose and verse" unless one writes a complete 
treatise on the "art of writing," defining each word as 
one would define the terms in a treatise on chemistry. 
And on this account all essays about "poetry" are 
usually not only dull but inaccurate and wholly useless. 
And on like account if you ask a good painter to tell 
3^ou what he is trying to do to a canvas he will very 
probably wave his hands helplessly and murmur that 

"He eh — eh — he can't talk about it." And that if 

you ' ' see anything at all, he is quite — eh — more or less — 
eh — satisfied. ' ' 



232 APPENDIX I 

Nevertheless it has been held for a shameful thing 
that a man should not be able to give a reason for his 
acts and words. And if one does not care about being 
taken for a mystificateur one may as well try to give 
approximate answers to questions asked in good faith. 
It might be better to do the thing thoroughly in a 
properly accurate treatise, but one has not always two 
or three spare years at one's disposal, and one is dealing 
with very subtle and complicated matter, and even so, 
the very algebra of logic is itself open to debate. 

Roughly then, Good writing is writing that is per- 
fectly controlled, the writer says just what he means. 
He says it with complete clarity and simplicity. He 
uses the smallest possible number of words. I do not 
mean that he skimps paper, or that he screws about like 
Tacitus to get his thought crowded into the least pos- 
sible space. But, granting that two sentences are at 
times easier to understand than one sentence containing 
the double meaning, the author tries to communicate 
with the reader with the greatest possible despatch, save 
where for any one of forty reasons he does not wish to 
do so. 

Also there are various kinds of clarity. There is 
the clarity of the request: Send me four pounds of 
ten-penny nails. And there is the syntactical simplicity 
of the request: Buy me the kind of Rembrandt I like. 
This last is an utter cryptogram. It presupposes a more 
complex and intimate understanding of the speaker than 
most of us ever acquire of anyone. It has as many 
meanings, almost, as there are persons who might speak 
it. To a stranger it conveys nothing at all. 

It is the almost constant labour of the prose artist 
to translate this latter kind of clarity into the former; 
to say ''Send me the kind of Rembrandt I like" in the 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 233 

terms of ''Send me four pounds of ten-penny 
nails. ' ' 

The whole thing is an evolution. In the beginning 
simple words were enough: Food; water; fire. Both 
prose and poetry are but an extension of language. 
Man desires to communicate with his fellows. He de- 
sires an ever increasingly complicated communication. 
Gesture serves up to a point. Symbols may serve. 
When you desire something not present to the eye or 
when you desire to communicate ideas, you must have 
recourse to speech. Gradually you wish to communi- 
cate something less bare and ambiguous than ideas. 
You wish to communicate an idea and its modifications, 
an idea and a crowd of its effects, atmospheres, contra- 
dictions. You wish to question whether a certain form- 
ula works in every case, or in what per cent, of cases, 
etc., etc., etc., you get the Henry James novel. 

You wish to communicate an idea and its concomitant 
emotions, or an emotion and its concomitant ideas, or 
a sensation and its derivative emotions, or an impres- 
sion that is emotive, etc., etc., etc. You begin with the 
yeowl and the bark, and you develop into the dance and 
into music, and into music with words, and finally into 
words with music, and finally into words with a vague 
adumbration of music, words suggestive of music, words 
measured, or words in a rhythm that preserves some 
accurate trait of the emotive impression, or of the sheer 
character of the fostering or parental emotion. 

When this rhythm, or when the vowel and consonantal 
melody or sequence seems truly to bear the trace of emo- 
tion which the poem (for we have come at last to the 
poem) is intended to communicate, we say that this part 
of the work is good. And "this part of the work" is 
by now ''technique." That "dry, dull, pedantic" tech- 



234 APPENDIX I 

nique, that all bad artists rail against. It is only a part 
of technique, it is rhythm, cadence, and the arrange- 
ment of sounds. 

Also the "prose," the words and their sense must be 
such as fit the emotion. Or, from the other side, ideas, 
or fragments of ideas, the emotion and concomitant emo- 
tions of this "Intellectual and Emotional Complex" (for 
we have come to the intellectual and emotional com- 
plex) must be in harmony, they must form an organism, 
they must be an oak sprung from one acorn. 

When you have words of a lament set to the rhythm 
and tempo of ' ' There '11 be a Hot Time in the Old Town 
to-night" you have either an intentional burlesque or 
you have rotten art. Shelley's "Sensitive Plant" is one 
of the rottenest poems ever written, at least one of the 
worst ascribable to a recognized author. It jiggles to 
the same tune as "A little peach in the orchard grew." 
Yet Shelley recovered and wrote the fifth act of the 
Cenci. 



It is occasionally suggested by the wise that poets 
should acquire the graces of prose. That is an exten- 
sion of what has been said above anent control. Prose 
does not need emotion. It may, but it need not, attempt 
to portray emotion. 

Poetry is a centaur. The thinking word-arranging, 
clarifying faculty must move and leap with the ener- 
gizing, sentient, musical faculties. It is precisely the 
difficulty of this amphibious existence that keeps down 
the census record of good poets. The accomplished 
prose author will tell you that he ' ' can only write poetry 
when he has a belly-ache ' ' and thence he will argue that 
poetry just isn't an art. 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 235 

I dare say there are very good marksmen who just 
can't shoot from a horse. 

Likewise if a good marksman only mounted a few 
times he might never acquire any proficiency in shoot- 
ing from the saddle. Or leaving metaphor, I suppose 
that what, in the long run, makes the poet is a sort of 
persistence of the emotional nature, and, joined with 
this, a peculiar sort of control. 

The saying that ''a lyric poet might as well die at 
thirty" is simply saying that the emotional nature sel- 
dom survives this age, or that it becomes, at any rate, 
subjected and incapable of moving the whole man. Of 
course this is a generalit}^, and, as such, inaccurate. 

It is true that most people poetize more or less, be- 
tween the ages of seventeen and twenty-three. The 
emotions are new, and, to their possessor, interesting, 
and there is not much mind or personality to be moved. 
As the man, as his mind, becomes a heavier and heavier 
machine, a constantly more complicated structure, it 
requires a constantly greater voltage of emotional energy 
to set it in harmonious motion. It is certain that the 
emotions increase in vigour as a vigorous man matures. 
In the case of Guido we have his strongest work at fifty. 
Most important poetry has been written by men over 
thirty. 

' ' En 1 'an trentiesme de mon cage, ' ' begins Villon and 
considering the nature of his life thirty would have seen 
him more spent than forty years of more orderly living. 

Aristotle will tell you that ' ' The apt use of metaphor, 
being as it is, the swift perception of relations, is the 
true hall-mark of genius. ' ' That abundance, that readi- 
ness of the figure is indeed one of the surest proofs that 
the mind is upborne upon the emotional surge. 

By "apt use," I should say it were well to under- 



236 APPENDIX I 

stand, a swiftness, almost a violence, and certainly a 
vividness. This does not mean elaboration and compli- 
cation. 

There is another poignancy which I do not care to 
analyze into component parts, if, indeed, such vivisec- 
tion is possible. It is not the formal phrasing of Flau- 
bert much as such formality is desirable and noble. It 
is such phrasing as we find in 

''Era gia I'ora che volge il disio 
Ai naviganti" . . . 

Or the opening of the ballata which begins : 

''Perch 'io non spero di tornar gia mai 
Ballatetta, in Toscana." 



Or: 



'S'ils n'ayment fors que pour 1 argent, 
On ne les ayme que pour Theure." 



Or, in its context: 

' ' The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs, ' ' 

or, in its so different setting, 

"Ne maeg werigmod wyrde widhstondan 
ne se hreo hyge helpe gef remman : 
for dhon domgeorne dreorigne oft 
in hyra breostcofan bindath faeste." 

These things have in them that passionate sim- 
plicity which is beyond the precisions of the intellect. 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 237 

Truly they are perfect as fine prose is perfect, but they 
are in some way different from the clear statements of 
the observer. They are in some way different from that 
so masterly endinj,^ of the Hcrodias: ''Comme elle etait 
tres lourde ils la portaient alternativement, " or from 
the constatation in St. Julian Hospitalier: ''Et I'idee 
lui vient d 'employer son existence au service des autres." 

The prose author has shown the triumph of his intel- 
lect and one knows that such triumph is not without its 
sutl'erings by the way, but by the verses one is brou^-ht 
upon the passionate moment. This moment has brou.i»lit 
with it nothings that violates the prose simplicities. The 
intellect has not found it but the intellect has been 
moved. 

There is little but folly in seeking- the lines of divi- 
sion, yet if the two arts must be divided we may as well 
use that line as any other. In the verse something^ has 
come upon the intelligence. In the prose the intelli- 
gence has found a subject for its observations. The 
poetic fact pre-exists. 

In a different way, of course, the subject of the prose 
pre-exists. Perhaps the difference is undemonstrable, 
perhaps it is not even communicable to any save those 
of good will. Yet I think this orderliness in the great- 
est poetic passages, this quiet statement that partakes 
of the nature of prose and is yet afloat and tossed in the 
emotional surges, is perhaps as true a test as that men- 
tioned by the Greek theorician. 

5 

La poesie, avec ses comparaisons obligees, sa mythologie 
que ne croit pas le poete, sa dignite de style a la 
Louis XIV., et tout I'attirail de ses ornements ap- 
peles poetiques, est bien au-dessous de la prose des 



238 APPENDIX I 

qu'il s'agit de donner une idee claire et precise des 
mouvements du coeur; or, dans ce genre, on n'emeut 
que par la elarte. ' ' — Stendhal. 

And that is precisely why one employs oneself in 
seeking precisely the poetry that shall be without this 
flummery, this fustian a la Louis XIV., "farcie de 
comme." The above critique of Stendhal's does not ap- 
ply to the-Poema del Cid, nor to the parting of Odysseus 
and Calypso. In the writers of the duo-cento and early 
tre-cento we find a precise psychology, embedded in a 
now almost unintelligible jargon, but there nevertheless. 
If we cannot get back to these things; if the serious 
artist cannot attain this precision in verse, then he must 
either take to prose or give up his claim to being a 
serious artist. 

It is precisely because of this fustian that the Parnas- 
siads and epics of the eighteenth century and most of the 
present-day works of most of our contemporary versifiers 
are pests and abominations. 

As the most efficient way to say nothing is to keep 
quiet, and as technique consists precisely in doing the 
thing that one sets out to do, in the most efficient man- 
ner, no man who takes three pages to say nothing can 
expect to be seriously considered as a technician. To 
take three pages to say nothing is not style, in the seri- 
ous sense of that word. 

There are several kinds of honest work. There is the 
thing that will out. There is the conscientious formu- 
lation, a thing of infinitely greater labour, for the first 
is not labour at all, though the efficient doing of it may 
depend on a deal of labour foregoing. 

There is the "labour foregoing," the patient testing 
of media, the patient experiment which shall avail per- 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 239 

haps the artist himself, but is as likely to avail some 
successor. 

The first sort of work may be poetry. 

The second sort, the conscientious formulation, is more 
than likely to be prose. 

The third sort of work savours of the laboratory, it 
concerns the specialist, and the dilettante, if that word 
retains any trace of its finer and original sense. A 
dilettante proper is a person who takes delight in the 
art, not a person who tries to interpose his inferior pro- 
ductions between masterwork and the public. 

I reject the term connoisseur ship, for "connoisseur- 
ship" is so associated in our minds with a desire for 
acquisition. The person possessed of connoisseurship is 
so apt to want to buy the rare at one price and sell it at 
another. I do not believe that a person with this spirit 
has ever seen a work of art. Let me restore the foppish 
term dilettante, the synonym for folly, to its place near 
the word diletto. 

The dilettante has no axe to grind for himself. If 
he be artist as well, he will be none the less eager to 
preserve the best precedent work. He will drag out 
"sources" that prove him less original than his public 
would have him. 

As for Stendhal's stricture, if we can have a poetry 
that comes as close as prose, pour donner tine idee claire 
et precise, let us have it, "^ di venire a do io studio 
quanto posso . . . che la mia vita per alquanti anni 
duri." . . . And if we cannot attain to such a poetry, 
noi altri poeti, for God's sake let us shut up. Let us 
"Give up, go down," etcetera; let us acknowledge that 
our art, like the art of dancing in armour, is out of date 
and out of fashion. Or let us go to our ignominious 
ends knowing that we have strained at the cords, that 



240 APPENDIX I 

we have spent our strength in trying to pave the way 
for a new sort of poetic art — it is not a new sort but an 
old sort — but let us know that we have tried to make it 
more nearly possible for our successors to recapture this 
art. To write a poetry that can be carried as a com- 
munication between intelligent men. 

To this end io studio quanta posso. I have tried to 
establish a clear demarcation. I have been challenged 
on my use of the phrase "great art" in an earlier article. 
It is about as useless to search for a definition of ' ' great 
art" as it is to search for a scientific definition of life. 
One knows fairly well what one means. One means 
something more or less proportionate to one's experi- 
ence. One means something quite different at different 
periods of one's life. 

It is for some such reason that all criticism should be 
professedly personal criticism. In the end the critic 
can only say ' ' I like it, " or ' ' I am moved, ' ' or something 
of that sort. When he has shown us himself we are 
able to understand him. 

Thus, in painting, I mean something or other vaguely 
associated in my mind with work labelled Durer, and 
Rembrandt, and Velasquez, etc., and with the painters 
whom I scarcely know, possibly of T'ang and Sung — 
though I dare say I've got the wrong labels — and with 
some Egyptian designs that should probably be thought 
of as sculpture. 

And in poetry I mean something or other associ- 
ated in my mind with the names of a dozen or more 
writers. 

On closer analysis I find that I mean something like 
"maximum efficiency of expression"; I mean that the 
writer has expressed something interesting in such a 



THE SERIOUS ARTIST 241 

way that one cannot re-say it more effectively. I also 
mean something associated with discovery. The artist 
must have discovered something — either of life itself or 
of the means of expression. 

Great art must of necessity be a part of good art. I 
attempted to define good art in an earlier chapter. It 
must bear true witness. Obviously great art must be an 
exceptional thing. It cannot be the sort of thing any- 
one can do after a few hours' practice. It must be the 
result of some exceptional faculty, strength, or percep- 
tion. It must almost be that strength of perception 
worJiing with the connivance of fate, or chance, or what- 
ever you choose to call it. 

And who is to judge? The critic, the reviewer, how- 
ever stupid or ignorant, must judge for himself. The 
only really vicious criticism is the academic criticism 
of those who make the grand abnegation, who refuse 
to say what they think, if they do think, and who quote 
accepted opinion ; these men are the vermin, their treach- 
ery to the great work of the past is as great as that of 
the false artists to the present. If they do not care 
enough for the heritage to have a personal conviction, 
then they have no licence to write. 

Every critic should give indication of the sources and 
limits of his knowledge. The criticism of English poetry 
by men who knew no language but English, or who 
knew little but English and school-classics, has been a 
marasmus. 

When we know to what extent each sort of expres- 
sion has been driven, in, say, half a dozen great litera- 
tures, we begin to be able to tell whether a given work 
has the excess of great art. We would not think of let- 
ting a man judge pictures if he knew only English pic- 



242 APPENDIX I 

tures, or music if he knew only English music — or only 
French or German music for that matter. 

The stupid or provincial judgment of art bases itself 
on the belief that great art must be like the art that it 
has been reared to respect. 



APPENDIX II 
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER TO ''THE DIAL'' 

There is no culture that is not at least bilingual. Yet 
in 1912 or 1913 we find an American editor who writes 
of Henri de Regnier and M. Remy de Gourmont as 
"these young men." The rest of his sentence is to say 
that their work is unknown to him. This lacuna in his 
mental decorations does not in the least chagrin him. 
He has no desire to add to his presumably superabundant 
knowledge. 

His confrere was the ''new editor" of another maga- 
zine recommended to me as a "progressive." Here are 
some of his words : 

"We wish to make the fiction in this magazine come 
as near to truth as circumstances permit ..." 

Second example : 

"The contributors make the magazine and the maga- 
zine makes the contributors." 

Are we still to believe that literature will come through 
the magazines? Has any first-class work of any sort 
ever been done to the specifications of a machine for 
pleasing the populace? 

Is America to produce real literature or to continue, 
as she is at the present moment, a joke, a byword in lit- 
erature for the ridiculous? 

243 



244 APPENDIX II 

Investigate the standards and the vitality of the stand- 
ards of the "best editorial offices," and see what spirit 
you find there. Do they believe that art is, in any 
measure, discovery? Is there any care for good letters, 
or even enough care for good letters to make them in 
any way concerned in trying to find out what consti- 
tutes and what makes for, good letters? 

They have called Henry James European. Yet a 
deal of his work is about American subjects. Is a man 
less a citizen because he cares enough for letters to 
leave a country where the practice of them is, or at least 
seems, well-nigh impossible, in order that he may be- 
queath a heritage of good letters, even to the nation 
which has borne him? 

It is not that the younger generation has not tried to 
exist ''at home." It is that after years of struggle, one 
by one, they come abroad, in search of good company 
and good conversation, or send their manuscripts abroad 
for recognition; that they find themselves in the pages 
even of the "stolid and pre- Victorian Quarterly" be- 
fore "hustling and modern America" has arrived at 
tolerance for their modernity. 



I 



APPENDIX III 

EZRA POUND FILES EXCEPTIONS 

London, Eng., July 30, 1916. 
Editor of Reedy ^s Mirror: 
In the interests of accuracy : 



I was not born in Utah, '^it is immaterial," but still 
I am not to be confused with ' * Ezra, the Mormon, ' ' how- 
ever charming and sympathetic or fictitious he may have 
been. I was born in Idaho, in Hailey, in "the residence 
now occupied by Mr. Plughoff" (unless he has moved). 
There is, so far as I know, no memorial tablet. 



I am not the "head of the vorticist movement." I 
said quite clearly in my memoir of Gaudier-Brzeska that 
the vorticist movement implied no series of personal 
subordinations. The pleasure of the vorticist movement 
was to find oneself at last inter pares. Mr. Wyndham 
Lewis is a man of so marked a genius, of such swift and 
profound intuitions that it would be ridiculous to speak 
of anyone else as being his "head." I cannot picture 
either Brzeska or Etchells considering himself as any- 
one's elbow or shin-bone. As an active and informal 
association it might be said that Lewis supplied the 
volcanic force, Brzeska the animal energy, and perhaps 
that I had contributed a certain Confucian calm and 

245 



246 APPENDIX III 

reserve. There would have been no movement without 
Lewis. 

At any rate, if you are irrevocably wedded to the 
phrase, "head of the movement," you would be more 
correct in applying the title to Lewis than to anyone 
else. 



Let us come to your remarks about Gaudier-Brzeska's 
sculpture in your issue for July 14 : 



You say it seems to you "a new language known only 
to the sculptor." 

Has any new light ever come in the arts or in the 
sciences save through a new speech known, at first, only 
to the artist or the inventor? 

There was a language known only to abstract mathe- 
maticians (I believe to the men who experimented in 
"determinants"). This language gradually became 
known to physicists, or to a physicist, and you have now 
the very popular wireless telegraph, which is still "in- 
comprehensible" to a very great number of people. 

The intelligent man will learn as much as he can 
rather than pretend to be more ignorant than he is. 

B 

You ask: "What is formless form?" And then you 
rush on to talk about ^'mutually agreed upon symbols/^ 
I have not talked about "formless form." But try to 
follow me for a moment. 

A circle or a triangle has just as much form as the 
Albert Memorial. Its form is simpler, to be sure. 



( 



EZRA POUND FILES EXCEPTIONS 247 

Some centuries ago John Heydon professed to derive 
assthetic satisfaction from the perfection of simple geo- 
metrical forms. There is the fable of Giotto's circle. I 
do not base an argument on these records. I adduce 
them simply to persuade you that it is possible to dis- 
tinguish between a simple form and a ^'formless form." 
The latter term is your own. I do not profess to under- 
stand it. 

Now it is manifestly ridiculous to say that you can- 
not take pleasure in a form merely because it is not the 
form of a man, an animal or a bunch of asparagus. 

Many forms, such as those of the stone zoological gar- 
den on the Albert Memorial, are incapable of delighting 
us by the mere fact that they portray easily recognizable 
flora and fauna. 

The perspective of arches as one looks toward the 
Koran niche in the Mosque of Cordova gives one in- 
finitely more pleasure than the idiotic representative 
slush which "ornaments" St. Paul's Cathedral. The 
so-called ornaments obviously represent certain '^ saints" 
(behold your "mutually agreed upon symbol." The 
damn things are "saints," models of virtue, sacred ef- 
figies of deceased Orientals). The form of this statuary 
suggests nothing so much as plates of decomposed ice 
cream on a warm day, or soiled clothes dumped out of 
a hamper. 

The arches in Cordova have, however, no form save 
the form of very beautiful arches. They do not repre- 
sent anything else. The combination or composition is 
interesting. It required more skill to arrange this series 
of arches than to make one beautiful arch. If I claim 
an architectural pleasure in seeing this series of arches 
no one will call me fanatic or even fantastic. Yet this 
pleasure is a pleasure in form, in unadulterated form. 



248 APPENDIX III 

Ultimately all sculpture is judged by its form. As 
music is judged by its sound. 

If sculpture were judged by the closeness with which 
it copies pre-existing material objects, the plaster cast 
or mould of the object would be the apex of the achieve- 
ment. 

You do not demand that the musician copy natural 
sounds. You permit him to start with a simple melodic 
form and develop his fugue, his harmony, or whatever 
he chooses. 

In the case of Gaudier 's ''Dancer," you find your 
*' themes given you" with the utmost clarity and dis- 
tinctness. You have the circle on the breast and the 
triangle on the face. These two forms become animate, 
move, interplay, an increasing suggestion of power and 
movement in their various positions, distortions, culmi- 
nating in the great sweep of the shoulders, the back of 
the statue, the arm thrown over the head. 

It seems to me foolish to talk of this as the ''power- 
fully crude suggestions of the beginning of sculpture." 
If, however, it did not suggest even to you the adverb 
"powerfully," I should think it failed through being 
over-intellectual, over-civilized in its concept, lacking 
in the emotional energy of great art. 

There is in this work nothing of the "Rodin impres- 
sion of emergence" theory. 

C 

When you write, "Without interposition of symbol, 
without ornament," you are right. When you add 
"without proportion or form," you are in error. 

Brzeska's statues have form. No material object can 
escape it. My contention is that they have very inter- 
esting and expressive forms. It is not necessary that 



EZRA POUND FILES EXCEPTIONS 249 

one should associate their form or forms with the forms 
of anything else. It is for the spectator to decide 
whether the forms of this sculpture are in themselves 
delightful. There is no need of referring the form of 
the statue to the form of something extraneous. 

As to proportion: ''The Boy with a Coney" has 
"scale." Perhaps I had better define that last term. 
Scale is a very skillful sort of proportion. We say that 
a statue or a painting has "scale" when its proportions 
are so finely arranged that it might be reproduced in 
various sizes without the destruction of its beauty. This 
process is not infinite. It is not necessary that every 
work of art should possess it. 

Still, when a novelist says by way of praise that a six- 
line poem has the "form of a novel" or that it "is like 
a good novel" or "contains" a novel, he is making an 
interesting criticism of the poet's sense of proportion 
and balance and "form" (if one be permitted to use the 
word as it were metaphorically). 

When a statue one foot high could be reproduced at 
forty times that size and still remain finely proportioned, 
this possibility is an interesting commentary on the 
sculptor's sense of "proportion." 

D 

So let us leave Hamlet's clouds which were so "like" 
something or other. The musician Eric Satie once wrote 
a prelude which he called "Prelude in the shape of a 
pear." It served as a designation. 

E 

As for understanding and "mutually agreed upon 
symbols" and the general "intelligibility," I open a 



250 APPENDIX III 

weekly abomination and find a reproduction of a piece 
of sculpture labeled, ' ' Fi^re Representing Aspiration. ' ' 
It displays a plump, lolling female and an infant de- 
ficient in the spankable parts. One can go down to the 
"Tate" in peace time and se'e messy pictures by the 
late Mr. Watts called ''Hope," "Love," etc. These 
works do not please me. I never see why "Hope" 
mightn't just as well be something else. And as for the 
figure "representing" Aspiration. Does it represent 
"Aspiration"? I never saw aspiration looking like 
that. But I have seen spaghetti piled oh a plate and 
the form was decidedly similar. A great deal of "re- 
presentational" sculpture is, in form, not unlike plates 
of spaghetti. 

In conclusion, I would advise the patient to look care- 
fully at the illustrations to the '^Gaudier-Brzeska/' I 
would then advise him to get the local art gallery to pro- 
vide him with Wyndham Lewis' "Timon" portfolio. I 
would then ask him to go forth again into the world 
and see what he can see where before he saw little or 
nothing. 

The great mass of mankind are ignorant of the shape 
of nearly everything that they see or handle. 

The artisan knows the shape of some of his tools. 
You know the shape of your pen-handle, but hardly the 
shape of your typewriter. The store of forms in the 
average man's head is smaller than his meager verbal 
vocabulary. 

Yours, 

Ezra Pound. 



APPENDIX IV 
VORTOGRAPHS 

The tool called the vortescope was invented late in 
1916. Mr. Coburn had been long desiring to bring 
cubism or vorticism into photography. Only with the 
invention of a suitable instrument was this possible. 

In vortography he accepts the fundamental principles 
of vorticism, and those of vorticist painting in so far as 
they are applicable to the work of the camera. 

The principles of vorticism have been amply set forth 
by Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound and Gaudier-Brzeska. 
The immediate ancestry is given in two quotations in 
Blast: Pater's ''All arts approach the conditions of 
music"; and Whistler's "We are interested in a paint- 
ing because it is an arrangement of lines and colours." 
Cezanne began taking "impressions" of masses. The 
term "mass" or "form" has been more prominent than 
the term "line" in recent discussions. 

The vorticist principle is that a painting is an expression 

by means of an arrangement of form and colour in the 

same way that a piece of music is an expression by 

means of an arrangement of sound. In painting the 

form has only two dimensions (though it may suggest 

or "represent" a third dimension). In sculpture one 

uses three dimensions. 

251 



252 APPENDIX IV 

Or to put it another way : Painting makes use of colour 
arranged on a surface; Sculpture of masses defined by 
planes. 

In vortography colour is practically excluded. There 
can be suggestion of colours. There can be a variety 
in the colour of the paper on which the vortograph is 
printed. But the medium of the vortographer is prac- 
tically limited to form (shapes on a surface) and to 
a light and shade; to the peculiar varieties in lightness 
and darkness which belong to the technique of the 
camera. 

THE CAMERA IS FREED FROM REALITY 

A natural object or objects may perhaps be retained 
realistically by the vortographer if he chooses, and the 
vortograph containing such an object or objects will not 
be injured if the object or objects contribute interest to 
the pattern, that is to say, if they form an integral and 
formal part of the whole. 

The vortoscope is useless to a man who cannot recognise 
a beautiful arrangement of forms on a surface, when his 
vortoscope has brought them to focus. His selection 
may be almost as creative as a painter's composition. 
His photographic technique must be assumed. It does 
not form a part of this discussion, though it is extremely 
important, and all, or most, of the qualities of the black 
and white, of light and dark, will depend upon it. 
These things, however, can be discussed by any intel- 
ligent photographer, assuming that such persons exist. 
There is no need of any special foreword about this part 
of the technique. 



VORTOGRAPHS 253 

Vorticism has reawakened our sense of form, a sense 
long dead in occidental artists. Any person or animal 
unable to take pleasure in an arrangement of forms as 
he or she takes pleasure in an arrangement of musical 
notes, is thereby the poorer. People are sometimes 
tone-deaf and colour-blind. Other people, perhaps more 
numerous, are form-blind. Some ears cannot recognise 
the correct pitch of a note, and some eyes get no pleasure 
from a beautiful or expressive arrangement of forms. 

Until recently people enjoyed pictures chiefly, and often 
exclusively because the painting reminded them of 
something else. Numerous contemporaries have passed 
that state of development. 

The modern will enjoy vortograph No. 3, not because 
it reminds him of a shell bursting on a hillside, but 
because the arrangement of forms pleases him, as a 
phrase of Chopin might please him. He will enjoy 
vortograph No. 8, not because it reminds him of a 
falling Zeppelin, but because he likes the shape and 
arrangement of its blocks of dark and light. 

Obviously vortographs will lack certain interests that 
are to be found in vorticist paintings. They bear the 
same relation to vorticist painting that academic photog- 
raphy bears to academy painting. Almost any fool can 
paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot 
off a Kodak. 

Certain definite problems in the aesthetics of form may 
possibly be worked out with the vortescope. When 
these problems are solved vorticism will have entered 
that phase of morbidity into which representative paint- 



254 APPENDIX IV 

ing descended after the Renaissance painters had de- 
cided upon all the correct proportions of the human 
body, etc., etc., etc. That date of decline is still afar 
off. 

Vortography stands below the other vorticist arts in that 
it is an art of the eye, not of the eye and hand to- 
gether. It stands above photography in that the vor- 
tographer combines his forms at will. He selects just 
what actually he wishes, he excludes the rest. He chooses 
what forms, lights, masses, he desires, he arranges them 
at will on his screen. He can make summer of Lon- 
don October. The aereen and submarine effects are got 
in his study. All these vortographs were done in two 
or three rooms. The dull bit of window-frame (vorto- 
graph No. 16) produces "a fine Picasso," or if not a 
"Picasso" a "Coburn." It is an excellent arrange- 
ment of shapes, and more interesting than most of the 
works of the bad imitators of Lewis. 

Art photography has been stuck for twenty years. 
During that time practically no new effects have been 
achieved. Art photography is stale and suburban. It 
has never had any part in esthetics. Vortography may 
have, however, very much the same place in the coming 
gesthetic that the anatomical studies of the Renaissance 
had in the aesthetics of the academic school. It is at 
least a subject which a serious man may consider. It is 
not for me to decide whether there can be a mathematical 
harmony of form, angles, proportions, etc., arranged as 
we have had a mathematical "harmony" arranged for 
us in music. 

I am not concerned with deciding whether such a mathe- 
matical schedule is desirable or would be beneficent. 



VORTOGRAPHS 255 

But if it is possible, then the vortescope could be ex- 
tremely useful, and may play a very important part m 
the discovery of such a system. 

Such a system would be of esthetics and not merely of 
physics and optics. It would "depend" on the science 
of optics as much and as little as musical harmony de- 
pends on the physiology of the ear. 

Impressionism sought its theoretic defence in, if it did 
not arise from, Berkeley's theory of the minimum visible, 
i.e., of the effect of points of light and colour on the 
retina. 

Pleasure is derivable not only from the stroking or push- 
ing of the retina by light waves of various colour, but 
ALSO by the impact of those waves in certain arranged 
tracts. 

This simple and obvious fact is the basis of the "mod- 
ern" "art" "revolution." 

The eye likes certain plainnesses, certain complexities, 
certain arrangements, certain varieties, certain incite- 
ments, certain reliefs and suspensions. 

It likes these things irrespective of whether or no they 
form a replica of known objects. 



APPENDIX V 
ARNOLD DOLMETSCH ^ 

It was better to dig up the bas-reliefs of Assur- 
banipal's hunting than to have done an equal amount 
of Royal Academy sculpture. There are times when 
archaeology is almost equal to creation, or when a resur- 
rection is equally creative or even more creative than 
invention. Few contemporary composers have given 
more to to-day's music than has Arnold Dolmetsch. 

His first realization was that music made for the 
old instruments could not be rendered on the piano. 
This proposition is exceedingly simple. You may play 
the notes of a violin solo on a piano or a banjo, but it 
will not be the same music. You may play the notes 
written for clavichord and harpsichord on the piano, 
or the pianola, but you will not make the same music. 
The first necessity, if one were to hear the old sounds, 
was a reconstruction of instruments, a multiplication 
of reconstructions; and this, as every educated person 
well knows, Arnold Dolmetsch has effected. 

The next step was the removal of general misunder- 
standings of the old musical notation. This" Mr. Dol- 
metsch has also triumphantly done in his ' ' Interpretation 
of the Music of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen- 
turies" (Novello, London, and H. W. Gray Co., New 
York). Not only this, but he has opened the way for 
a reconciliation between musicians and '^the intelligent." 

1 Egoist. 1917. 

256 



ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 257 

This last act is extremely important; the reconstruction 
of old music is an activity which might end in itself. A 
possible re-fusion of intelligence with that other curious 
thing commonly known as '^ musical intelligence" con- 
tains many possibilities for the future; for the imme- 
diate future, the part of it chiefly concerning us and 
our mortal enjoyments. 

All people have terms of abuse. Among artists and 
literati it is customary to excuse a man's stupidity by 
saying ''He is a musician." Among musicians they 
say ' ' Oh, that is a singer, ' ' implying depths of ignorance 
inconceivable to all but musicians. 

Dolmetsch strikes at the root of the trouble by show- 
ing how music has been written, more and more, for the 
stupid; how the notators have gradually ceased to trust 
to, or to expect, intelligence on the part of interpreters ; 
with the result that the whole major structure of music, 
of a piece of music, is obscured ; the incidental elements, 
the detail show on the score equally with the cardinal 
contentions of the composer. 

The neophyte is taught notes one by one, is taught 
scales. In the old way he would have been given the 
main structural points, he would have played the bare 
form of the piece, and gradually have filled in with the 
details. 

There is more in Dolmetsch 's ''Section 14, on Divi- 
sions," than in a long course of practice and exercises; 
more I mean for the intelligent person to whom the 
mysteries of music have always seemed rather a jum- 
ble, a sort of pseudo-psychism practised by, and prac- 
ticable for, people otherwise mentally inefficient. 

I cannot demonstrate all this on a page. If Dol- 
metsch would write a shilling manual, simply dogma, 
leaving out his proofs and his explanations, and if 



258 APPENDIX V 

people would use it on children and on themselves, we 
might have an almost immediate improvement, for a 
big book travels slowly, and few have the patience to 
understand anything, though many will obey a com- 
mand. 

The technical points I can scarcely go into, but they 
are there in Dolmetsch's book for musicians, and for 
those who have unsatisfied curiosities about music. 

The general reflections stirred by his writing I may, 
however, set down. 

First: It seems to me that in music, as in the other 
arts (beginning in the eighteenth century, and grow- 
ing a poison from which we are not yet free), greater 
rigidity in matters of minutiae has forced a break-up 
of the large forms; has destroyed the sense of main 
form. Compare academic detail in one school of paint- 
ing, and minute particularization about light and colour 
in another. 

Any work of art is a compound of freedom and order. 
It is perfectly obvious that art hangs between chaos on 
one side and mechanics on the other. A pedantic in- 
sistence on detail tends to drive out ''major form." A 
firm hold on major form makes for a freedom of detail. 
In painting men intent on minuti^ gradually lost the 
sense of form and form-combination. An attempt to re- 
store this sense is branded as "revolution." It is revo- 
lution in the philological sense of the term. 

The old way of music, teaching a man that a piece 
of music was a structure, certain main forms filled in 
with certain decorations, stimulated his intelligence, 
spurred on his constructive faculty. You might play 
the same lute-piece as many others, but you thought 
about playing it differently (i.e. with different notes), 
of playing it better. In a sense that is true of any per- 



AENOLD DOLMETSCH 259 

former, but the contemporary way of approach lays 
stress on having a memory like a phonograph; the 
reflex-centres are as highly thought of as is the main 
conception. Thematic invention has departed. 

Naturally the best musicians escape the contagion. 
A few good artists in any period always do escape 
whatever contagion may be prevalent. In any age also, 
a few learned men must always support the poet against 
the music-teacher; the artist who creates against the 
machine for the vending of pictures; the inventive 
writer against the institutions of publishing and dis- 
tribution. The modus is exceedingly simple. Some one 
must know that the fashion of the last forty years is not 
the eternal law of the art, whatever art it may be. 

The heretic, the disturber, the genius, is the real per- 
son, the person stubborn in his intelligent instinct or 
protected by some trick of nature, some providential 
blindness, or deafness even, which prevents his being 
duped by a fashion; some stubbornness, some unsocial 
surliness which prevents him from pretending to be 
duped, from pretending to acquiesce. 

When I, for emphasis, say above, "providential blind- 
ness or deafness," one must remember that in the case 
of the artist — if there be some such trick played on him 
by nature for the preservation of art, the blindness or 
deafness or whatever apparent protective insensitiveness 
there may be — there is always a compensating sensitive- 
ness or hyper-sensitiveness, enforced it may be by some 
involuntary or half-voluntary concentration, which 
keeps him interested, absorbed in the art. 

Nature and humanity will never in the long run be 
bilked by the music-teacher and the academician. They, 
nature and humanity, abhor an unreasoning setness; 
haste is also in their abomination. There also the artist 



260 APPENDIX V 

scores, for the ''most brilliant," the most apparently 
sudden, great artist is always a plodder. He alone can 
afford to wait. The singer of late nineteenth-century 
ballads must get through with his job at once : ditto for 
the actor, for the successful society portraitist. 

In nothing has invention been slower than in the 
notation of music; it took centuries to find even a Not- 
ker, a Gui d'Arezzo. To-day the man who desires to 
comprehend first and make his noise afterward comes 
upon the idiotic mess of unexplained, unexplainable 
scale-playing. The days when a consort arranged itself 
while you waited your turn at the barber 's appear purely 
legendary. Our ears are passive before the onslaught 
of gramophones and pianolas. By persuading ourselves 
that we do not hear two-thirds of their abominable grind, 
we persuade ourselves that we take pleasure in the re- 
mainder of what they narrate. We feign a deafness 
which we have not, instead of developing our faculty 
for the finer perception of sound. 

We pride ourselves on having exact transcripts of 
Arabic and Japanese and Zulu and Malay music; we 
take a sentimental pleasure in being reminded (in spite 
of the drone and wheeze, in spite of shriek and squeak), 
that we once heard the voice of Chaliapine. And as for 
the structure of music! . . . 

We turn to the printed page; the eye is confused 
by the multitude of ornamental notes and trappings; 
lost in the maze; each note is written as importantly 
as any other. And ' ' Modern ' ' music is so much a fuzz, 
a thing of blobs and of splotches — sometimes beautiful, 
and probably the best of it is more beautiful to those 
who know exactly what fixed lines it avoids. 

But the structure of music? . . . "Technicalities" 
. . . "Artists don't enjoy their art as much as people 



ARNOLD DOLMETSCH 261 

who just enjoy it without trying to understand. ' ' That 
last quotation is one of the prize pieces of buncombe 
that the last generation indulged in. There is no com- 
parison between the artist's enjoyment and the enjoy- 
ment of the layman. Only the artist can know this, for 
he is an artist in his own art and layman in all the rest, 
thus he can get some sense of proportion. He knows 
the difference between enthusiasm with vague half-com- 
prehension, and enthusiasm plus an exact understand- 
ing. If the expert rejects 95 per cent of all examples 
of an art presented to him, he has more pleasure in the 
remainder than the layman can get from the lot with 
vague and omnivorous liking. 

What we know of any art is mostly what some mas- 
ter has taught us. We may not know him in the flesh, 
but the masterwork, and only the masterwork, discon- 
tents us with mediocrity, or rather, it clarifies our dis- 
contentment ; we may have suspected that something was 
wrong, been uninterested, worried, found the thing dull ; 
the masterwork diagnoses it. 

Dolmetsch has also made a fine diagnosis. He has 
incidentally thrown a side-light on metric,^ he has said 
suggestive things about silence d' articulation, about the 
freedoms of the old music. When I say suggestive, 
I do not mean that we are to get a jargon out of these 
things, to use in artistic controversy ; but there is enough 
in them to prevent fools from interfering with, or carp- 
ing at, rhythms achieved by the artist in his own way. 
Art is a departure from fixed positions; felicitous de- 
parture from a norm. It is a fight against mechanics. 
In music the trouble may well have begun with an at- 
tempt to write music for the insensitive and the block- 
head. 

1 Vide note on Vers Libre and Dolmetsch. 



262 .PPENDIX V 

If we are to regain a thematic sense, or a sense of 
thematic invention or of structure, if we are to have 
new music, or to have the old music beautifully played ; 
if we are to have a clearer comprehension of what we 
do hear, we may owe a good deal to Mr. Dolmetsch. 

Finis 



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